Painting by Richard Dadd, displayed in the Tate Gallery, London

The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke by Freddie Mercury (Queen II)

The Arch-Magician is the bearded man in the centre; directly underneath him in a red cloak is the 'Politician with senatorial pipe'; moving to the left, next to the politician is Fairy Dandy with the nymph (though it's hard to see that she's wearing yellow) on his right. Underneath the nymph is the pedagogue, and, just at his right elbow there is the head of the satyr who 'peers under lady's gown'. 

In the left-hand brim of the Arch-Magician's hat - although very difficult to see - is Queen Mab in her state carriage (see the description from Patricia Allderidge's book, below), above her the harridan watching Oberon and Titania.

At the top of the picture, from left to right: Tatterdemalion and Junketer blowing on horns, the dragonfly trumpeter, soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor (showing a coat to the ploughboy), ploughboy, good apothecary-man (with pestle and mortar), and underneth him, reaching for the ploughboy's pocket, the thief. 

  Freddie had been a student at Ealing Art College. Above: Freddie in 1968 in the graphics department  with fellow student Tony Catigani. Picture: Renos Levithis (another student), Record Collector, Mar 1996. Below, a picture from www.queenparadise.com taken with friends shortly after he left there in the summer of 1969:

 “It’s one of the most complex paintings I’ve ever seen” says Roger, “both in terms of details and what is actually going on. It has about 50 different scenarios and all done by a man who was quite literally bonkers. Freddie made us all go to the Tate to look at the painting. That song was totally Freddie’s thing, full of Olde English vocabulary – tatterdemalion, satyrs, pedagogues, ostlers and junketers. Some really astonishing stuff”.

Indeed, the song’s lyrics are hysterically, hilariously rococo: “Fairy dandy tickling the fancy of his lady friend…Oberon and Titania watched by a harridan…The nymph in yellow, what a quaere fellow”.

The use of the archaic word ‘quare’ stands out a little here, around this time, Freddie was still coming to understand his own sexuality and it seems that such inquisitiveness could sometimes enter the world of the little people. Mark Hodkinson’s book ‘Queen – The Early Years’ (Omnibus) recounts a story about a female friend of Freddie’s who had often noticed him talking about homosexuality. So she took Freddie to meet a gay friend of hers, nicknamed Pixie. The friend remembers Freddie staying only a short while and remarking on his exit “Pixie was a nice queer”.

“Quare is an odd word” says Roger. “I think it was used for purely artistic reasons in that song. But Freddie was seeking flamboyance in everything at that point. He was quite hetero at that time, but he was really becoming interested in transcending everything that included sex. But no, I don’t think that lyric was about whether he was a puff. I would say it was about using language that went with that painting and being as flamboyant as possible”. 

A picture from the same magazine showing Freddie posing in front of the picture 

About Richard Dadd 

(August 2005):

Richard Dadd was born in 1817 in Chatham, the town where I currently live. A few years ago, I saw a play about his life at the Medway Little Theatre, which I remember as being extremely good. I intend, if I can, to find out more about this play. Before the Hyde Park concert on July 15, I took some time in the course of the afternoon to visit the Tate and view ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke’ at first hand. I had taken Freddie’s lyrics with me, and was stunned in the amount of detail he had managed to describe in the painting. I have also been very fortunate to stumble across a book about Richard Dadd which I believe is out of print: "The Late Richard Dadd 1817-1886" by Patricia Allderidge, published by Tate Gallery Publications in 1974. Here are a few words from the introduction, followed by a summary of Dadd’s biography contained there and a link to some scans of the pages of the book:

The ‘obituary’ notice which began with these words was written in 1843, when Richard Dadd was twenty-six years old, and if the writer had been asked to revise it at any time during the next forty-three years he would probably have made few alterations. To the world in general, Dadd remained in oblivion from the moment when his name passed from the sensational headlines of the press, after the insane killing of his father; and although interest in him was never altogether extinguished, there was more curiosity that he still existed at all, than recognition that he still existed as a painter…..

In more recent times the position has been reversed, and Dadd is known chiefly as a ‘mad’ painter. It is even suggested that madness liberated some latent talent which had not previously been apparent, enabling him to produce one great painting, ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke’….he was, already, before insanity overtook him, an artist of rare perception whose future as an imaginative painter was assured; and that insanity should only be regarded as one of the many influences contributing to his lifelong artistic development, affecting it though the revolutionary change in the pattern of his daily life, as well as the alteration of his personality and any possible intensification of vision which it brought about.

The title (‘The Late Richard Dadd’)…draws attention to one of the most important elements in Dadd’s personality; the total commitment to, and understanding of, his own creative power, which enabled him to keep on working and to grow and develop in this isolation, knowing that he could never win any more recognition or response from the world outside his asylum than if he had been literally dead.

A summary of the biography:

Richard Dadd was the fourth of seven children of his father Robert and mother Mary Ann, who died young of unknown causes. Robert was a well-known and respected geologist who was involved in a number of projects in the Chatham area, married a second time; his wife this time, Sophia, also died young having given birth to two sons. According to relevant documents, the children grew up happily despite the loss of both mother and stepmother. The eldest daughter of the first marriage was already sixteen and took charge of the household.

After he was later committed to Bethlem Hospital, Dadd painted many subjects around Chatham and Rochester from memory, including Rochester castle, landscapes and shipping. This suggests that earlier studies, which were lost, would have included them. His extraordinary talent was recognised as such by his family and he was given every encouragement by his father.

In 1834 the family moved to London. Richard was by now seventeen. Robert was able to mix with a number of men from the art world who may have been helpful in fostering his son’s talent. By December 1837, Richard was admitted as a full student of the Royal Academy Schools. Both Dadd’s character and talent were greatly respected by his contemporaries, and he won medals at the Academy Schools for his painting and drawing.

By 1842, Dadd had acquired the patronage of Sir Thomas Phillips, a South Wales solicitor and former mayor of Newport. He was forty-one, and wished to embark on a grand tour of a number of countries before settling down as a barrister in London and to take a young artist with him to make drawings. He set off with Dadd in July.

The journey involved a thoroughly punishing schedule through many European countries involving various different types of transport, including episodes undertaken on foot, horse and various pack animals.

Dadd eventually returned from the travels insane; it is clear that some of his siblings were also inflicted by mental illness and there were therefore probably some genetic factors – but a combination of the hectic excitement of the journey and an attack of sunstroke in Egypt that appeared to trigger off the first symptoms of his mental disorder. He became delusional and paranoid – the bewildering scenes he had been exposed to, especially those of mass fervour such as wailing women at a funeral procession in Damascus, had led, as he describes some time in Cairo in his own words, to ‘the most unaccountable impulses, that would not let me stop to sketch, but were constantly prompting me on, to drink in, with greedy enjoyment, the stream of new sensations’. He was also reading about ancient Egypt, and its mythology featured prominently in the expression of his thinking after his mind became confused.

After returning home, Dadd was back in lodgings in London in the summer of 1843;his landlady became afraid of him and an old friend found his behaviour so odd that he was reluctant to have Dadd in his studio. After he left his room, it was found to contain nearly three hundred eggs (the carpet was covered in shells) and quantities of ale, both of which had been his exclusive diet for some time. A number of drawings of his friends were also found, all shown with their throats cut.

Despite a consultation with a specialist doctor, who recommended that Dadd should be put under restraint, Robert Dadd decided to care for him himself, feeling that there had never been anything other than affection between himself and his son.  At the end of August, Dadd asked his father to go with him down to Cobham – a favourite place of his from his earlier years in Kent. One of his sisters was fearful that Dadd was now dangerous, and alerted her brother Stephen, who was staying in the area, but to no avail. During a walk in Cobham Park, Dadd murdered his father with a spring knife that he had bought expressly for the purpose.

It appears that, in his deluded state, Dadd believed his father was the devil, and his own mission as an envoy of god (most probably Osiris) was ‘to exterminate the men most possessed with the demon’. He appeared unaware of the identity of others, including his father’s and his own. After appearing in court, his state of mind left no one in doubt, and in August 1844 he was admitted to the criminal lunatic department of Bethlem Hospital in South London after being certified insane.

The physician in charge of Dadd’s case, Dr Edward Thomas Monro took an interest in Dadd as a painter; his father had also been a visiting physician to Bethlem and a patron of young artists. Within a year, Dadd started to produce incredibly beautiful paintings again. He had a total commitment to his own creative power as an artist, although it may also have been a means of escape from his new surroundings, which were bleak and overcrowded, and all that remained of a world that had disintegrated around him.

Little of the work of his first eight years at Bethlem has come to light, but around 1853, there were changes in the hospital which seemed to be reflected in the quantity and content of his work. Dr William Charles Hood carried out some outstanding reforms when he took charge of Bethlem, and the new steward, George Henry Haydon, shared his outlook. It was to Haydon that Dadd dedicated his painting ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke’. 

Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire, purpose built as a criminal asylum, was completed by 1864 when Dadd was transferred there. After twenty years, he was once again able to see the countryside that had previously been so important to his work. Though he retained his intellectual powers and continued painting, it is clear that Dadd never fully regained his sanity and he eventually died of consumption in Broadmoor in January 1886.  

 Commentary on the painting from Patricia Allderidge's book:

 The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke quasi 1855-64 Oil on canvas, 'The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke (Painted for G. H. Haydon. Esq by Rd Dadd).

Exh: Ashmoleum Museum, Oxford 1935-37 (as 'A Fantasy'): British Romantic Painting, Paris 1972(93)

Prov: G.H. Haydon from 1864, given to him by the artist. Alfred Morrison of Fonthill; by descent to his daughter Lady Garry, and to her daughter Lady Sassoon.

Tate Gallery, presented by Sir Siegfried Sassoon in 1963, in memory of the painter^'s great-nephews Julian, Edmund and Stephen Gabriel Dadd.

In a recently discovered MS poem (see below) Dadd explains how he came to paint this picture for 'an official person^', evidently G. H. Hayden the steward of Bethlem Hospital; who, after seeing 'Oberon and Titania', expressed a wish for something similar for himself. Either that or (Dadd is not quite sure), Haydon had a friend who wrote fairy poetry, and asked for a sketch to illustrate some verses, from which the whole thing grew. The date 'quasi' 1855-64 seems to be explained in the opening lines of the poem. Dadd says that this all happened 'Half twelve, that's six, 'tis more | Perhaps . . .' years ago: but this was written in 1865, which would have made it ten years ago if the 1855 date were correct. It is probable that he genuinely could not remember when he had begun the painting, and so, being meticulously precise over dating, added the ^'quasi^' to what was only an estimation. However, in 1855 there would not have been much of 'Oberon and Titania^' (which is dated 1854-8) ready for Haydon to covet: and anyway it is unlikely that these two extremely complicated paintings were being carried on simultaneously for a long period. It is possible, then, that the date should really be 1857 or 1858-64.

In the same poem Dadd elucidates the subject and identifies all the characters. The fairy woodman (the 'feller') in the centre foreground, clothed from top to toe in leather, raises his axe to strike a hazel nut; the rest of the characters are 'Fays, gnomes, and elves and suchlike', who have gathered to settle some dubious point known only to themselves, but are now watching to see whether he will split the nut with one stroke. In the centre is a white-bearded old man, the arch magician, a patriarch with 'triple crown of subtle might'. The crown looks like a reference to the Pope, reinforced by the gesture of his right hand as if in blessing; but Dadd explains this as a command 'Except I tell you when, strike if you dare’. In his outstretched left hand he holds a 'large little club', for hitting small fairies over the head. Along the brim of his hat are dancers in Spanish costume on the right, and on the left Queen Mab in a car of state drawn by female centaurs, with a gnat as coachman, Cupid and Psyche for pages, and 'some strapping fairy footman' behind. The group below the patriarch are: on the left two eavesdropping elves, a fairy dandy making a pass at a fairy nymph, and the crouching squinting figure of a pedagogue, a critic whose 'business is to teach to do.

Do it himself? Oh! no! tis you.'; directly below, in pink, a politician 'with senatorial pipe^', and seated on his right a well shod clod-hopper with a satyr^'s head, a 'modern fay'. In the group to the right of the Fairy Feller are an ostler from the fairy inn, watching intently with hands on knees; behind him a dwarf monk, more likely to attain the nether regions than heaven, and well acquainted with inns and ostlers; above these two, a good-humoured ploughman makes sage remarks to the indifferent 'Waggoner Will', whose head appears just below the axe. To the right and slightly above this group are two fairy men-about-town who live by their wits. To the far side of the magician stand two ladies^' maids, one holding a mirror, the other with a broom in one hand and her favourite hawkmoth perched on the other: their bulging calves and tiny feet, and the huge breasts of the girl on the left, shaped like the pointed end of the hazel nuts and straining against her bodice, provide an overtly erotic element which is extremely rare in Dadd^'s work, and is emphasised by the pre­sence of a leering satyr whose head appears just by the elbow of the crouching pedagogue, peering under the skirts of the right-hand girl. Below and to the left are a pair of rustic lovers, Lubin, a tanner and 'Chloe or Phyllis' a dairymaid; further down are two dwarfs, the man being a conjurer who at present is taking odds on whether the nut will be split, and to his right is a spider who is a master weaver and employs lesser spinners. Directly above the magician, Oberon and Titania watch the scene, watched in turn by an old lady in a scarlet cloak: and above and reading from left to right are the childhood favourites, soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, ploughboy, apothecary, thief, the apothecary looking somewhat like Robert Dadd sen. Over to the left are a dragonfly trumpeter (who looks very like a grasshopper), assisted by 'a tatterdemalion and a junketer, Holiday folk'; and below the dragonfly an elf peeps through the grasses at the spectator, showing apparently by his hat that 'Of the Chinese Small Foot Societee, He^'s a small member'. The 'pendants’ which trail from the patriarch's crown and wind about the picture 'represent vagary wild, | And mental aberration styled.| Now unto nature clinging close | Now wildly out away they toss....': their purpose is to bring grace to the picture, but eventually they are tied down to a stem. Dadd asks the benefit of the doubt over the size of the nuts, as he does not know what size fairies grow to.

This painting is the most completely fantastic of all his works, having no external narrative source. Its atmos­phere is one of trancelike intensity, which holds all the figures motionless and isolated, not only from the spectator, but from each other. Dadd's own account in the MS poem of how the picture was actually con­ceived, goes far to define if not to explain the quality of this atmosphere. He says that imagination would not be deliberately invoked; so he gazed at the canvas and thought of nothing, until pure fancy began to give form to the cloudy paint which he had already smeared over it: and there is certainly a feeling that all the characters have been, not so much invented. as con­jured out of the shades by the sheer effort of concen­trated observation. The sense of each one as a powerful presence in his or her own right is only confirmed by the detailed explanation of who they all are; and although this is interesting and amusing it is also in a way irrelevant, in that it neither adds to nor detracts from their independent existence. Although Dadd lightly suggests that the design and composition simply grew on the canvas, ‘Now minus and just here perhaps –plus’, it is of course one of the most intricate and carefully worked out of all his creations, conforming to many of his previous practices but with new and highly inventive variations. The flat decorative border used in ‘Oberon and Tiania’ and in the arlier fairy pictures, is here replaced by the enmeshed timothy grasses which seep diagonally across the surface of the picture, and which frame it also at the sides and back. We peer through them, as if into a glass-fronted box: but at the top left-hand corner the grasses from the front rise to meet those from the back like their own reflections in a mirror, flattening the space between into a mysterious no-man’s-land where the ordinary rules no longer apply. Scale and perspective shift, constantly and fluently, from one part of the picture to another, adding to the impression that we are looking in on an enchanted world. Within this shallow but ambivalent box-like structure, many subsidiary compositions are all linked into the major design. In the lower half of the picture the figures are grouped independently into an oval’ those at the top, helped out by a few daisies, form a less symmetrical ellipse; the brim of the patriarch’s hat, extended by grasses on the left-hand side, makes a boat-like shape which carries the whole of the supper part of the picture; the two pairs of larger figures counterbalance each other on either side; flowers and grass make their own independent arabesques; a vertical line can be traced down the exact centre of the picture from the tinker’s grinding wheel to a plane fruit lying below the Feller’s left foot; the four corners are closed off by diagonals; these are just a few of the elements of surface pattern which can be found in endless combination and permutation, within the main design. This follows a serpentine path from the bottom right-hand corner backwards and forwards across the picture, ending at the top left with the dragonfly’s long bugle. As it climbs the path recedes by means of a series of platforms, on which the main figures are grouped; while extra-terrestrial devices such as the leaf supporting Oberon and Titania are effortlessly superimposed, defying the very concept of a three dimensional world. The grey-green colouring with its dull leaden gleam produces a slightly congested effect, offset by the clearer colour in the dresses. This also helps to strengthen the impression of a world existing in another dimension, where time has bee solidified.

The figure of the patriarch, and the flowing line of his hat, seem to have been suggested by Blake, particularly such works as ‘The House of Death’ and some of his ‘Book of Job’ illustrations. A few of the figures are familiar from Dadd’s earlier works: the two girls are recognisably the ‘lazy queanes’ from ‘Robin Goodfellow’ and the two elves and the stance of the Fairy Feller himself come from the same source; the Fairy Feller also, at least in his hairstyle, has a look of Dadd in his early self-portraits; the ostler’s features can be found in ‘The Flight out of Egypt’, his pose in ‘A Curiosity Shop’; the men-about-town are also characteristic Dadd types: but overall this picture has no real precursors anywhere in his work. Even the technique is unfamiliar, particularly in the pebbled ground and some of the plane fruits, which are built up to an embossed finish with tiny individual lumps of paint. The picture is incomplete, and some of the hazel nuts, the Feller’s exe, and a part of the swirling pendants are only sketched in. from this it can be seen that Dadd’s method of tacking such a complicated painting was to work out the whole design in considerable detail in monochrome, and to finish small sections at a time, completely and independently: also that, at least sometimes, he worked from foreground to background, and at all points in between.

A part of the initial idea for this picture may have come from Dadd’s recollection of a poem called ‘To the Grasshopper’ by John Brent, which had been published in the Kentish Coronal for which he had designed the frontispiece in 1841. Besides a reference to the ‘bugle-winding Gnat’, which may have become transformed into the (alleged) dragonfly, the poem contains the lines ‘Deep shade thou lovest, and the arching grass,| With glimpse of fairy folk the stalks between’.