The Shepherd's Dream

This drawing was inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and, more directly, by William Warner’s poem Albion’s England (published 1612). It depicts a sleeping shepherd visited by fairies “Who, in their dancing, him so charm’d, / that though he wakt he slept.” Fuseli had painted the subject in the 1780s, and Georgina North appears to have created her work in his painting’s spirit.

Lady North, who studied with Fuseli, was the daughter of the Countess of Guildford, one of the artist’s most important patrons. Her drawings and paintings bear the strong influence of her teacher, though they are simultaneously less accomplished and more eccentric.