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LESSONS IN MAGIC
The iconic Flower Fairy paintings by Cicely Mary Barker were not only enchanting to look at – but also incredibly accurate botanical studies
When Cicely Mary Barker painted her famous F l owe r Fairies, her models were the children who attended the kindergarten run by her sister at their family home. The schoolroom looked on to a rambling garden and Cicely – whose studio was in the garden – would often ask a little girl or boy (for not all fairies are girls) to model for her at breaktime.
Her charming illustrations for the Flower Fairy series of books were all painted from life. Cicely made a different costume for each fairy – she unpicked them once a painting was finished so she could recycle the material – and she made the wings from twigs and gauze.
The Beechnut Fairy wore a little cap made from a prickly beech husk and mischievously threw nuts down from the tree. The Dandelion Fairy’s slippers were embellished with tiny dandelion clock pompoms. The Tansy Fairy, with her tiny workbasket, stitched button-like flowers onto a green elfin coat. The Horse Chestnut Fairy shook conkers down to boys, even though he was black and blue with bruises from them pelting the tree with sticks, and the Pear Blossom Fairy, wearing a smart white jacket, perched joyfully on a tree that was in full blossom. The children were beautifully observed – and the flowers were all botanically correct. Cicely would send specimens to be identified at Kew, and sometimes a man from Kew would call at the house with specimens for her to paint.
An exhibition opening at London’s Garden Museum on Wednesday celebrates the centenary of the publication of Cicely’s first fairy postcards in 1918, and includes more than 40 of her original Flower Fairy watercolours. Among them is the Strawberry Fairy, a rosy-cheeked poppet in a strawberry romper suit and a strawberry-hull cap on top of her curls.
Many years ago I met the real Strawberry Fairy, who was then in her 70s. Cecily Angus, née Ayris, who died in 2009, was one of the pupils at the kindergarten run by Miss Barker’s sister Dorothy at their substantial Victorian semi in Croydon, South London.
Cecily recalled that, aged five, she was a robust little girl, unlike the dainty, slender children with long, flowing hair that Cicely favoured. Her older sister Betty was the Lily-of-the-Valley Fairy. The Primrose Fairy was Gladys Tidy, the charwoman’s daughter.
Cecily also sat as Herb Twopence Fairy – in green rompers this time – crouching uncomfortably on a stool to hold her pose. They would chat as Cicely was sketching. ‘She never made us pose for too long,’ Cecily said. ‘If she saw us getting fidgety, she’d say, “Getting tired, dear?” and she would break off and have us back another day. She was really absorbed in her art, and when she wasn’t painting, she was almost a recluse.’
Exhibition curator Emma House says the paintings have stood the test of time. ‘They’re enchanting,’ she says.
The first book of the series, Flower Fairies Of The Spring, was published in 1923, during a surge of interest in the supernatural. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a spiritualist, had publicised the Cottingley fairy photographs, taken by two Yorkshire schoolgirls in 1917 and 1920. Conan Doyle was convinced that here was evidence of fairy life. It was not until the 1980s that the cousins confessed: the fairies were cardboard cutouts.
Cicely Mary Barker died in 1973, aged 77. Born in 1895, she led a sheltered childhood owing to illness, and started painting in her teens. The Pear Blossom Fairy (left) and the Strawberry Fairy (above)
‘She’d write to Kew if there was the flowers,’ says Emma. ‘They’re not a plant she wasn’t sure about, or botanical paintings, but they are botaniif she only knew its local name,’ cally accurate. At the same time, explains Emma House. ‘She also colbecause she’s interested in folklore and lected folklore and history relating to mythology, her flowers have a character plants, and incorporated it into the verses and personality.’ Cicely was no believer accompanying the illustrations.’ in fairies, however. ‘Let me say quite For those who only know Cicely’s plainly that I have drawn all the plants work from books, a treat is in store. ‘It’s and flowers very carefully, from real not until you see the original watercolones; and everything that I have said ours that you realise how vibrant the colabout them is as true as I could make it,’ ours are and how beautifully rendered she declared in 1948, in Flower Fairies Of The Wayside. ‘But I have never seen a fairy; the fairies and all about them are just “pretend”… Now, I think, children will be able to tell the true parts from the pretend parts.’
It’s fair to say that even fewer children today would think the fairies are real, but there’s still a magical feel to Cicely’s paintings.