Art Institute of Chicago

The Shepherd's Dream

Georgina North

Date

c. 1820

Medium

Pen and black ink, and brush and black and gray wash, over graphite, on ivory wove paper

Culture

Switzerland

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

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.

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