Youthful transgressions and immaturity play out in many fairy tales, but few are as heartbreaking as Oscar Wilde’s original tale, ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’, one of five stories in The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888), his collection written for children. This affecting tale exploring themes of unrequited love, sacrifice and superficiality is captured by artist Del Kathryn Barton and filmmaker Brendan Fletcher, in The Nightingale and the Rose 2015.

In this story, a young student pines for the attention of his professor’s daughter, who toys with his affections. She promises the lovesick student a dance if he can find her a red rose, but none exist. Hearing the student’s laments and mistaking them for a call of true love, a nightingale undertakes a ritual to produce a red rose by piercing her chest with a thorn and singing until she is drained of blood, a red rose blooming on her demise. The student picks the rose and rushes to the girl, only to be spurned for another man who has bought her jewels.

Originally commissioned as an illustrated book by the journal Art+Australia, Barton’s images have been reimagined in this moving-image work with the look and feel of stop-motion animation. Of the story, Barton has said: ‘the Nightingale is the true artist as she gives completely of her deepest essence’.