Scena da Sogno di una notte di mezza estate

Edwin Landseer was Victorian Britain's favourite painter of animals, of stags and dogs, and this is his one venture into fairyland. The engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the man behind Britain's great railways and steamships, commissioned it in 1847 for the dining room of his London house, one of a series of scenes from Shakespeare. Landseer painted the moment from A Midsummer Night's Dream when Titania, queen of the fairies, wakes under a love spell and dotes on the weaver Bottom, whose head has been turned into that of a donkey. Being Landseer, the fairy wood is full of real creatures, rabbits and a monkey among them. When the picture went on show in 1851 Lewis Carroll admired the white rabbit at Titania's feet, an animal he would put to famous use a decade later.