Where Dorset Landscapes Meet the Magic of Flower Fairies™
Cicely Mary Barker is best known for her Flower Fairies, a series of fairy illustrations featuring botanically accurate plants, inspired by a lifelong fascination with the natural world. Thirty original Flower Fairies artworks are now on display at Bournemouth’s Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, shown alongside a selection of Barker’s landscapes inspired by her trips to Dorset and Hampshire that are being exhibited publicly for the first time. Together, these works form Flower Fairies™: Enchantment by the Sea.
Born in 1895, Cicely Mary Barker (affectionately known to her family as Ciskin or Cis) grew up in South Croydon in a household that valued creativity and nature. The family were passionate gardeners, and from an early age Cicely developed a close eye for plants and detail. Her parents were highly supportive of her artistic talent and introduced her to illustrated children’s books by artists such as Kate Greenaway and Beatrix Potter. Her father, an accomplished artist, also encouraged her formal art training at the Croydon School of Art.
Cicely’s professional career began in her youth. At just 15, her work was published in Father Tuck’s Annual alongside established illustrators. Several of her early sketches and sketchbooks are included in the exhibition. Following the death of her father when she was 17, Cicely helped support her family through her art, producing illustrations, poems, postcards and competition entries A photograph album from a family holiday to Swanage in 1907, shown alongside a scrapbook of her printed postcards, demonstrates how the Dorset coastline informed her early published work.
Quietly determined and industrious, Cicely began to produce a series of Flower Fairy watercolours, intricately designed to represent a specific flower. Each illustration was accompanied by a short verse written by Barker herself, reflecting the distinctive character of each plant. Cicely sent her paintings to several publishers, all of whom rejected the concept, until March 1922 when Blackie and Son accepted them for publication. When Flower Fairies of the Spring was finally published in 1923, it was an immediate success, leading to a series of books that remained popular throughout her lifetime and beyond.
Throughout her life, Cicely continued to visit the coast and take sketching holidays in search of rest and inspiration. Her paintings of Dorset’s stunning countryside and coastline, displayed publicly for the first time at the Russell-Cotes, reveal the depth and breadth of her artistic skills.
Flower Fairies™: Enchantment by the Sea brings together imagination and observation, fantasy and place. By displaying the iconic Flower Fairies alongside Barker’s Dorset landscapes, the exhibition offers a richer understanding of an artist whose creativity was rooted in a deep and enduring love of the natural world.
