Estella Canziani's The Piper of Dreams

Available for over a year

Jennifer Higgie continues her reappraisal of the spirit world’s influence on western art. How did fairy fever contribute to artists’ responses to World War I? An elf-like child, leaning against a tree in a springtime forest glade, plays a pipe. It’s an image created by Italian/British artist and illustrator Estella Canziani in 1914. Two years later it sold 250,000 copies. “As all hell rained down upon the fields of Flanders and the Somme, it would seem that every muddy trench had a copy of the painting pinned to its walls – a talisman of a better world.” In this series, Higgie traces the stories of artists who have connected with spiritualism and produced radical innovations. In the late 19th century, the likes of Richard Dadd created wild, hallucinogenic paintings inspired by fairies. But Higgie is also interested in the flip side - “the world of spirits and fairies as a space that privileges solace over innovation”, which Canziani communicated to so many through The Piper of Dreams. What does this gentle imagery add to the stories of ghosts and seances, the abstract and the surreal, that Higgie is navigating through? Previously the editor of frieze magazine and a judge of the Turner Prize, Jennifer Higgie presents a podcast about women in art history, Bow Down. Written and presented by Jennifer Higgie Produced by Chris Elcombe A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3