The isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs that give delight, and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop upon me; that when I waked, I cried to dream again.
Sir Joseph Noel Paton was renowned for his Shakespearean fairy scenes. His meticulous and descriptive style was ideally suited to the narrative subjects in which he specialised.
Following studies at the Royal Academy Schools in London, Paton was invited by his friend John Everett Millais to join the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Paton declined, electing instead to return to Scotland to cultivate his expert knowledge of folklore and legend. He did, however, continue to paint in a Pre-Raphaelite style, and his subject-matter was predominantly fantastical, mythological or moralising. Upon viewing Paton’s 1849 masterpiece The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania Lewis
Carroll noted with excitement in his diary: ‘we counted 165 fairies!’
Amongst his admirers was Queen Victoria, who in 1864 commissioned Queen Victoria in the Death Chamber of the Prince Consort and named him Queen’s Painter and Limner.