Joseph Noel Paton

Sir Joseph Noel Paton was a Scottish painter known for detailed fairy pictures and religious and historical scenes. Born in 1821, he became one of the most successful Scottish artists of the Victorian era, admired for elaborate paintings crowded with tiny fairies, based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. These teeming, imaginative scenes delighted Victorian audiences.

He also painted serious religious and allegorical works and was appointed the Queen's official painter in Scotland. A friend of the writer Lewis Carroll, he moved in cultured circles and was also a poet. Paton's intricate fairy paintings remain his most enchanting legacy, packed with fantasy and painstaking detail.