Wednesday 10 February 2016

Sir Joseph Noel Paton Dandelion


I was in Edinburgh last month for a meeting about another project i'm working on and while there I visited the National Galleries of Scotland. I spied a dandelion in this painting by Sir Joseph Noel Paton The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania, painted in 1850. The dandelion, in seed, is below and to the left of Titania's foot. According to the label:
"In 1857, when the picture was displayed in the partially completed National Gallery of Scotland, an enraptured Lewis Carroll counted no fewer than one hundred and sixty-five fairies in Paton's microscopically detailed Shakespearian microcosm."