Who was Cicely Mary Barker?

Cicely Mary Barker was an artist renowned for her whimsical images of flower fairies. The pictures are at once realistic portraits of children and botanicals and imaginative creations depicting a fairy world.

Barker was born in West Croydon, Surrey, in 1895. From childhood, Barker suffered periods of frailty and ill health, including epilepsy. In her frequent convalescences, Barker spent much time in bed looking at books, including books illustrated by Kate Greenway and Randolph Caldecott, which would become a significant influence on her artistic development. Additionally, her delicate health prevented her from attending school so she was educated at home and spent much her time writing and drawing.

In her teenage years, Barker began education in art through a correspondence course and her father enrolled her in the Croydon Art Society. The group recognized her artistic promise and elected her a life member at the age of 16, making her the youngest person to receive the recognition.

Early Work

When Barker was 15, her father submitted her work to a stationary printer, which began her commercial career. After the publication of four of her postcards, Barker sold her artwork to periodicals, printing companies, and eventually book publishers.

At the tender age of 17, Barker mourned the loss of her father. She, her mother, and her older sister Dorothy were put in a financially precarious situation. Barker began to submitted her work to many magazines and publishers. After teaching kindergarten in schools, Dorothy, Barker’s sister, opened a kindergarten in the family home. In this environment, Barker’s signature artwork took shape. Years later, Barker recalled: “My sister ran a kindergarten and I used to borrow her students for models. For many years I had an atmosphere of children about me—I never forgot it.”

In addition to the children at her sister’s school, Barker used the children of friends and neighbors as models for her flower fairies. Several times, she also used the aptly named young girl, Gladys Tidy, who came to the house on Saturdays to help with household chores.

Artistic Influence

In all of her illustrations, Barker was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites who pursued “truth to nature.” Not only did Barker rely on real children as models, but she also insisted on real botanicals for her drawings. If she could not find a plant she wanted to draw, she would request them from the staff at Kew Gardens.

Barker said of her style, “I have always tried to paint instinctively in a way that comes naturally to me, without any real thought or attention to artistic theories.” She worked most often with watercolor and pen-and-ink, but she proficient in many media. While she emulated the Pre-Raphaelites, she clarified, “I am to some extent influenced by them—not in any technical sense, but in the choice of subject-matter and the feeling and atmosphere they could achieve. I very much like, for example, the early paintings of Millais and though he is later, the wonderful things of Burne-Jones.”

In the forward to her seventh and final flower fairies book, Flower Fairies of the Wayside, Barker wrote:

I believe that many children would be glad to know how much of this book, and of the others in the Flower Fairy series, is true, and how much is “pretend”. So, let me say quite plainly, that I have drawn all the plants and flowers very carefully, from real ones; and everything that I have said about them is true as I could make it. But I have never seen a fairy; the fairies and all about them are just “pretend“. (It is nice to pretend about fairies).

Cicely Mary Barker’s Legacy

Beyond the flower fairy books, Barker illustrated many religious books for children, including some which she made with her sister. The family was Anglican and instilled in Barker a deep sense of religiosity. Barker was described as “one of the pillars” of the church she attended and she donated artwork for charitable causes related to her faith.

After the death of her sister in 1954, Barker took on the sole care of her aging mother and had less time for artwork. During this period she did design a stained glassed window in commemoration of her sister. Unfortunately, the church where the stained glass window was displayed, St. Edmund’s Pitlake, is no longer standing and the window went missing.

After her mother’s death in 1960, Barker moved to a different home and suffered many ailments that took in and out of the nursing home. In 1973, Barker passed away.

While she is best known and loved for her flower fairies, Barker leaves a legacy of many beautifully illustrated works including lesser known stories like Lord of the Rushie River, a story inspired by a dream she had of a girl riding on the back of a swan. Some of her religious works that she collaborated on with her sister include He Leadeth Me and Our Darling’s First Book.

There is no doubt that all of her work, both secular and religious, was informed by Barker’s faith and Christian perspective. In a talk on one of her religious paintings, the headmaster of St. Andrew’s in Croydon said, “There can be no doubt that, in this major Christian work, Barker is affirming her core belief in the saving quality of children. It is children who embody a spiritual affinity with God.” This can be said of many of Barker’s works.