The Shepherd's Dream
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.)
Classification
pen and ink drawings
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
93758
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
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 ...