• Sighle Bhreathnach Lynch
  

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  Winter 2023
  Volume 40. No. 4

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Titania’s Palace is a miniature doll’s house that was made in Dublin between 1907 and 1922. It was created by Sir Nevile Wilkinson (1869–1940), who studied heraldry while in the army and, on retirement, drawing and engraving. Sir Nevile exhibited at the Royal Academy, London and the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, was a member of the Water Colour Society of Ireland, vice-president of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters and a member of the Art Workers Guild.

The inspiration for the palace came to Sir Nevile in the garden of Mount Merrion House in Blackrock, Co Dublin. While drawing the trunk of an old sycamore tree, his young daughter, Guendolen, told her father that she had seen Titania, the fairy queen, disappear into the ground. She sat by the tree in anticipation of the fairy’s reappearance until her father explained that fairies usually only came above ground in moonlight. Disappointed, Guendolen insisted that her father give her a detailed description of where the fairies lived. The artist, who was already skilled in miniature work, was near completion of a miniature replica of Wilton House, Wiltshire, the family estate of his wife, Lady Beatrix Herbert (1878–1957), eldest daughter of the 14th Earl of Pembroke. It included miniature replicas of the collection of paintings and family portraits; and the incident with Guendolen prompted him to design, decorate and furnish a residence for the tiny queen, her consort, Oberon, their seven children, the court of good fairies, pixies and gnomes and the many treasures of Fairyland – Titania’s Palace.

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