Free Fairy Pictures

This page is dedicated to more or less pretty pictures of fairies of all kinds and from various resources. All used images are public domain in EU (author + 70 years) and USA (published before 1923). If you are not from these countries, please check appropriate laws before using them. In general personal use and use for education purposes should be no problem. This page will grow constantly while the new (actually old) image become available.

Lovely fairy images from The absent-minded fairy for boys and girls

This book was written by Margaret Vandegrift (1845-1913) and illustrated by Edmund Birckhead (E. B.) Bensell (1842-1894) for Ketterlinus Printing House in 1884. Only the illustrations with fairies are used:

There are nine pretty illustrations of a fairy with wings in different situations altogether.

Let's check another book!

Fairies I Have Met is a book of short stories written by Mrs. Rodolph Stawell, illustrated by Edmund Dulac, and published by Hodder and Stoughton in New York and London in 1910.

There are 12 stories altogether in the book, but not all of them present fairies. Edmund Dulac made eight full-color illustrations (plus the cover), and we can see fairies in five illustrations (cover included). They are particularly interesting for fairy lovers of their variety. According to Mrs. Rodolph Stawell, fairies live practically everywhere in nature: in water, in clouds, in flowers, on the moon, and occasionally one may even hide in an ink-pot (unintentionally causing the creation of a beautiful poem).

Here are the illustrations with the titles of the stories and text written under each of the illustrations in the original edition.

The Sea-Fairy and the Land-Fairy, and how they quarreled

(a sea-fairy)

He held out the little shell in the beam of colored light

Princess Orchid's Party

(wild-rose-fairy and orchid-fairy)

She smiled at him very graciously when he was introduced to her

The Cloud that had no Lining

(a cloud-fairy and moonshine-fairies)

And because the silver of the moonshine-fairies is very light he was able to carry a great deal of it

The Fairies who changed Places

(a snow-fairy and a flower-fairy)

Drop-of-Crystal was too busy to speak

Source: https://edmunddulac.wordpress.com/2024/05/02/fairies-i-have-met/

Next illustrations come from Mary's Gift Book, a collection of different stories by different authors. The presented story is actually a poem A Spell For a Fairy by Alfred Noyes and illustrated by Claude A. Shepperson.

The book published under the patronage of Princess Mary of Great Britain wa spublished by Hodder & Stoughton simultaneously in London, New York and Toronto in 1914. All profits from sale came to Queen's Work For Women Fund.

The poem describes a ritual of calling the fairies which is rather strange by today's standards (it includes sacrifice of animals, for instance) and there are no fairies in all pictures below, yet we decided to present all for the sake of the authenticity.

Another amusing tidbit - these very same illustrations were used in a popular prank called Cottingley Fairies where two girls claimed they played with real fairies and made five photos to prove that. Arhur Conan Doyle was great advocate of support of their story. Many years later both girls (old ladies by then) confirmed it was a prank with illustrations being cut out of the book and placed in the nature.

The fairy who believed in human beings is an almost two-hundred-page book written and illustrated by Gertrude Alice Kay. In essence, it's a chapter book about fairies for children who would like to know more about these magical creatures. The author in her introduction says she always wanted to learn if fairies have families like people, where they live, what they eat, and so on. The main character is Gundy, all fairies have wings and are very small, the most important things happen in the moonlight, and a lot of other stuff is explained in a nice, although often too tutorial tone. The illustrations, dozens of line drawings, and four full-color full-page illustrations are a better part of the book, which was published by Moffat, Yard & Company, New York in 1918.

Here we can see all four color pictures from the book.

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More pictures from other books and by other illustrators will follow. In the meantime you can check some fairy paintings. There will be some fairy clipart in foreseeable future as well.