Georgina North
English, 1798-1835
The Shepherd's Dream
INV-9375
Georgina North
English, 1798-1835c. 1820
The Shepherd's Dream
Georgina North English, 1798-1835 →pen and ink drawingsdrawings (visual works)
Date
c. 1820
Medium
Pen and black ink, and brush and black and gray wash, over graphite, on ivory wove paper
Dimensions
54.5 × 75.5 cm (21 1/2 × 29 3/4 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection
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.