Fairy Feller's Masterpiece

Last month I completed a pilgrimage to see the Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke painting at the Tate Britain Gallery in London. 

I had to wait my turn as the painting had a crowd of fans around it from Germany who were pointing out details to each other.  

Finally it was my turn.  It's an average sized painting protected by a glass covering. It's very complex. Dadd worked on it for 9 years and never quite finished up the lower left panel.  

Was I standing right were Freddie, John, Brian and Roger stood?  How in the world did they capture and transform that painting into a song so brilliantly?  By the time Freddie even got to the painting it was already well over a 100 years old.  

I love how Freddie's voice soars on the words DELIVER and LEADER. The use of the harpsichord was a brilliant touch ... and I'm not sure if they ever used that instrument again on anything else. The song is just so well done. It amazes me.  

What other band but Queen, I ask you, could do such a brilliant job with this obscure painting and bring it to life?

Thoughts anyone??

No one!

And wow, you visited just for the painting?

Yes ... seeing it via computer was just not working for me.  Must be seen in person. If Freddie could drag his band mates to it, the least I could do was to check it out.

One of my favorite Queen songs of all time. LOTS of information on the backing track but even more impressive are all the vocal overdubs! And Freddie DID bring that song to life in terms of his visual description! For such a young band at that stage of their career they really had used the studio and their ideas to the full!

Brilliant!

It's also interesting to note Richard Dadd painted The Fairy Feller's Masterstroke while serving a lifetime sentence in a mental hospital for killing his father.  He possibly suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.

Dadd at one time thought he was possessed by the Egyptian god, Osiris. His father did not want to commit him - but he should have because Dadd's father ended up being a victim.  After killing his father,  Dadd tried to attack a tourist in the same way. He was declared insane and lived the rest of his life in an asylum.  A steward at the hospital took an interest in Dadd's artistic endeavors and commissioned a Fairy painting - which became Dadd's Fairy Feller's Master Stroke.  The Feller is poised to split a hazelnut which will be hollowed out to make a new fairy carriage for Queen Mab. Dadd wrote a very long poem to accompany the painting which describes each character in detail and explains his inspirations for the composition. The microscopic detail present in the painting is quite amazing.   Madness, it seems, ran in Dadd's family because two of his brothers and one sister also were declared insane.

Getting back to the musical portrayal of the painting, the vocal overdubs mentioned in an earlier post truly work, in my opinion, to create a "manic" type atmosphere within the song.  Does it sound like  competing voices to you?  Perhaps directing and inspiring the artist and his furious and detailed  brush strokes that bring about the creation of the characters in the painting?    

Queen taking on this complex painting and bringing it to life just amazes me to no end.   I wonder what Dadd would have thought about it upon hearing it - in all of his madness would he recognize his own characters?

There is a harpsichord in Killer Queen. I can send you it isolated if you send me your email address

EDIT: actually, having listened to it again not really sure if it is a real harpsichord?!

On KQ it's a jangle piano. The multi-track thing was mislabelled.

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=20833&roomid=6437

His painting 'bacchanalian scene' looks like a Freddie Mercury portret imo

Some years ago I made a bit of a study of the painting of The Fairy Feller's Masterstroke, and added some names to the picture.
See picture.

^ Thank you Rien for this very well laid out guide to the figures in the painting.   A guide such as this helps to appreciate the song better. 

Yesterday I tried to find another study to post onto here that I had seen posted to a site called Bohemiaplace.net. But that site appears to be gone now.   That site also had a line by line comparison of song lyrics to the poem which identified some common word usage. 

There were some key differences in the painting study I could not find and yours.  The most different identifications being the Satyr and the Nymph in Yellow.  In that study the Satyr is identified as the head just to the left of the Pedagogues elbow (and indeed he is a dirty laddio - as he peers under the ladies gown). The other is the nymph in yellow - identified next to the Pedagogue on the right side (and slightly behind the Pedagogues shoulder).  He wears a whitish gown with a yellow bodice, has nymph wings, and I thought his lips appeared to be overly reddish (a bit quaere, as no one else seems to have such bright lips).   Please take another look at the painting and tell me what you think of these figures I've just pointed out?  I'd been interested to know your assessment.

The Satyr... I think you're right about that one.
To be honest I never discovered that figure, but this one really looks like a Satyr and he is indeed looking under a gown.
The Nymph in yellow I cannot really see.

But all I did back then was reading the info on the internet and trying to complete it with my own thoughts.
I do have a high quality replica of the painting, bought at the Gallery, when I was there the painting was in storage and not on display... :-(

Thanks for pointing me the Satyr. Really good. Have to change my pic now :-)

I have looked at the picture again and changed a bit.
First I thought Tatterdemalion and a junketer was one person, but a tatterdemalion is a guy with old ragged clothes.
I cannot think of any figure than the one next to the dragonfly.
A junketer is a person who wants to get in favour with politicians etc. So I think the guy sitting next to the senator is the junketer.
I still think the nymph in yellow is the one I first thought it was.
See the new picture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoB4qRkyldc

John was great. Great cover. I had to post this video, sorry for being off-topic.