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Permanent Exhibition
Our permanent Heath Robinson exhibition combines original artwork with books, photographs, film & digital media to tell the full story of Heath Robinson’s artistic career.
See Heath Robinson’s most popular work along with that of other artists, all themed on fairies and elves.
The most popular work in the Museum’s collection is a painting called ‘The Fairy’s Birthday’ and the finest examples of Heath Robinson’s illustrative work are the drawings that he made in 1914 to illustrate ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. These works from the Museum’s collection will be the centrepiece of an exhibition that traces the different ways in which fairies and elves have been portrayed from the early Victorian period to the recent past.
The Heath Robinson pictures will be complemented by examples by the foremost Victorian fairy artist Richard Doyle and his brother Charles Altamont Doyle. From the turn of the century will be illustrations by Charles Robinson and Arthur Rackham while from the inter-war years will be examples by Florence Mary Anderson, Helen Jacobs and Margaret Tarrant. There will also be eight of the original watercolours for the Flower Fairy books by Cicely Mary Barker. More recent works will include an original cel from Walt Disney’s film of Peter Pan and two watercolours by Brian Froud.
