In the nineteenth century the countries around the Mediterranean basin attracted an increasing number of Europeans, exploring, exploiting, sketching, photographing, noting impressions in pen and pencil, or just visiting. The West was finally beginning to understand a little of the Orient; it no longer seemed like a mysterious, elusive mirage. The Orient, however, was changed by this contact, as delicate rose petals bruise when clumsily touched. Indeed, much of it has now sadly been ravaged by the encroachments of occidental civilisation, war and revolution. The pictures in this exhibition are often, therefore, invaluable records of a way of life which was, even then, fast disappearing.

Fairy painting would seem to be a quintessentially Victorian product, yet its roots lie firmly within late eighteenth-century British art. Henry Fuseli (1741-1825) recognized the potential for fairy painting to both entertain and edify the British public. Fuseli, in his efforts to establish a new kind of poetic history painting, established the basic vocabulary of the genre: the quotation of high art and literature, the addition of folkloric themes, and the establishment of a central narrative scene surrounded by collaborative vignettes