2956912 The Fairy and the Sea Serpent (oil on canvas laid on panel) by Fitzgerald, John Anster (1832-1906); 19.05x27.94 cm; Private Collection; (add.info.: This strange subject is from the wilder shores of the great fairy painter\'s imagination. The son of an Irish poet, Fitzgerald was obsessed by fairies, and unusually for a Victorian artist his subjects were more often his own whimsies than borrowed from Shakespeare or Milton, and were much darker than the sweet renderings of his contemporaries. His manner of painting fairies was evidently Boschian, but with an opiate-fuelled Celtic inventiveness distinctly his own. Involved with the London theatre, his paintings were theatrically staged and lit, and are at their most effective when painted sketchily as if in a dream.); Photo 穢 The Maas Gallery, London.