Richard Dadd (1 August 1817 – 7 January 1886) was an English painter of the Victorian era, noted for his depictions of fairies and other supernatural subjects, Orientalist scenes, and enigmatic genre scenes, rendered with obsessively minuscule detail. Most of the works for which he is best known were created while he was a patient in Bethlem and Broadmoor hospitals.

Early life

Dadd was born at Chatham, Kent, on 1 August 1817, the son of chemist Robert Dadd (1788/9–1843) and Mary Ann (1790–1824), daughter of the shipwright Richard Martin. He was educated at King's School, Rochester, where his aptitude for drawing was evident at an early age, leading to his admission to the Royal Academy Art Schools at the age of 20. He was awarded the medal for life drawing in 1840. With William Powell Frith, Augustus Egg, Henry O'Neil and others, he founded The Clique, of which he was generally considered to be the leading talent. He was also trained at William Dadson's Academy of Art.

Mental illness and hospitalization

right|thumb|[[The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke, oil on canvas, (1855–64)|361x361px]]

On his return to England in May 1843, Dadd was diagnosed to be of unsound mind and was taken by his family to recuperate in the rural village of Cobham, Kent. In August of that year, having become convinced that his father was the Devil in disguise, Dadd killed him with a knife and fled to France. En route to Paris, Dadd attempted to kill a fellow passenger with a razor but was overpowered and arrested by police. Dadd confessed to killing his father and was returned to England, where he was committed to the criminal department of Bethlem psychiatric hospital (also known as Bedlam). There and subsequently at the newly created Broadmoor Hospital, Dadd was cared for in an enlightened manner by Doctors William Wood, William Orange and Sir William Charles Hood.

Dadd probably had paranoid schizophrenia. Two of his siblings had the condition, while a third had "a private attendant" for unknown reasons. Like most of his works, these are executed on a small scale and feature protagonists whose eyes are fixed in a peculiar, unfocused stare. Dadd also produced many shipping scenes and landscapes during his hospitalization, such as the ethereal 1861 watercolour Port Stragglin. These are executed with a miniaturist's eye for detail, which belies the fact that they are products of imagination and memory.

Death

After 20 years at Bethlem, Dadd was moved to Broadmoor Hospital, a newly built high-security facility in Berkshire. There he remained for the remainder of his life, painting constantly and receiving infrequent visitors; he died on 7 January 1886, "from an extensive disease of the lungs". A "substantial number" of his works are on display in the Bethlem Royal Hospital Museum.|260x260px]]

Freddie Mercury was inspired to write the song 'The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke' based on Dadd's painting, which he had seen at the Tate Gallery. In 2013 Neil Gaiman wrote an essay about the painting for the magazine Intelligent Life (now called 1843).

Angela Carter wrote Come unto these Yellow Sands, a radio-play based on Dadd's life, first broadcast in 1979.

Canadian author R. J. Anderson acknowledges Dadd as the basis of her fictional painter Alfred Wrenfield, who figures prominently in her young adult fantasy novel Knife (2009).

In 1987, a long-lost watercolour by Dadd, The Artist's Halt in the Desert, was discovered by Peter Nahum on the BBC TV programme Antiques Roadshow. Made while the artist was incarcerated, it is based on sketches made during his tour of the Middle East, and shows his party encamped by the Dead Sea, with Dadd at the far right. It was later sold for £100,000 to the British Museum.

Loreena McKennitt features Dadd's 1862 painting "Bacchanalian Scene" on the cover of her 1987 Christmas CD To Drive the Cold Winter Away.

Terry Pratchett included The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke in his 2003 Discworld novel The Wee Free Men. Tiffany, the protagonist, finds it in a book of fairy-tales and later escapes from a dream set within the picture. In the author's note, Pratchett describes the painting and gives a brief but sympathetic summary of Dadd's personal history and struggle with mental illness.

<gallery widths="210" heights="170" class="center">

File:Richard Dadd - Augustus Egg - Google Art Project.jpg|Augustus Egg, between 1838 and 1840

File:"Portrait of a Young Man" by Richard Dadd.jpg|Portrait of a Young Man, 1853

File:Titania Sleeping.jpg|Titania Sleeping

File:Bacchanalian Scene by Richard Dadd.jpg|Bacchanalian Scene, 1862

</gallery>

See also

  • Fairy painting
  • List of Orientalist artists

Notes

References

  • Allderidge, Patricia (1974). Richard Dadd. New York and London: St. Martin's Press/Academy Editions.
  • Allderidge, Patricia (1974). The Late Richard Dadd 1817–1886. London: The Tate Gallery.
  • Chaney, Edward (2006). 'Egypt in England and America: The Cultural Memorials of Religion, Royalty and Religion', Sites of Exchange: European Crossroads and Faultlines, eds. M. Ascari and A. Corrado. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi.
  • Chaney, Edward (2006b). 'Freudian Egypt', The London Magazine (April/May 2006), pp.&nbsp;62–69.
  • Greysmith, David (1973). Richard Dadd: The Rock and Castle of Seclusion. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.
  • Tromans, Nicholas (2011). Richard Dadd: the Artist and the Asylum. London: The Tate Gallery.
  • "Mercy - David Spareth Saul’s Life by Richard Dadd" at Bible.Gallery
  • Biography at Tate online by Patricia H. Allderidge
  • "Richard Dadd: The art of a 'criminal lunatic' murderer", BBC News Magazine
  • Dadd's portrait of Alexander Morison
  • Richard Dadd at The Berkshire Record
  • Biography at PopSubculture.com
  • The Book of British Ballads (1842), illustrated by Dadd
  • The Kentish Coronal (1840), frontispiece by Dadd