Fairy Tale Companion:
Richard Doyle |
Doyle, Richard (1824–83), English humorous artist, cartoonist, and fairy illustrator, affectionately referred to as ‘Dicky’ Doyle. A highly skilled draughtsman, he worked from an early age for the satirical magazine Punch and designed its famous front cover, used for over a century and depicting a procession of tiny fairy figures. Praised for his over 500 decorative illustrations, Doyle was also criticized for being too kindly in his caricatures, and he eventually resigned from Punch for its anti‐papal sentiments. His critically acclaimed illustrations of famous children's stories and fairy tales such as Dickens's Christmas Books (1845–6) and The Cricket on the Hearth (1846), selected Grimms' fairy tales in The Fairy Ring (1846), John Ruskin's The King of the Golden River (1851), and J. R. Planché's An Old Fairy Tale: The Sleeping Beauty (1865) made him a household name. In his late work he concentrated on fairy paintings, drawing heavily on the Grimms' fairy tales for inspiration. Critical judgement is divided on the quality of his large watercolours such as Snow White and Rosy Red (1871), but The Enchanted Fairy Tree: Or a Fantasy based on ‘The Tempest’ by Wm. Shakespeare (painted 1845, exhibited 1868) is a masterwork, typical of his incredibly detailed scenes depicting the antics of wicked elves and the romance of fairy maidens and their knights. His most celebrated book is In Fairyland (1870), a series of 16 watercolour scenes of fairyland, which accompanied a poem by William Allingham and, in the 1884 reissue, a specially written fairy tale by Andrew Lang, ‘The Princess Nobody’.
Bibliography
- Engen, Rodney, Richard Doyle (1983).
- ——Richard Doyle and his Family (1984).
- Hambourg, Daria, Richard Doyle: His Life and Work (1948).
- Martineau, Jane (ed.), Victorian Fairy Painting (1997).
- Peppin, Brigid, Fantasy Book Illustration 1860–1920 (1975).
— Karen Seago
