Dadd, Richard

Category: Artist and sculptor

Richard Dadd (1817 – 1886) was an English painter, noted for his depictions of fairies and 'other supernatural subjects'.  They appear to me to be of his visions of the spiritual world, simply because they are full of symbolic content and very familiar spiritual subjects.  

The paintings are all 'rendered with obsessively minuscule detail' another feature of visions where the clarity of what you are seeing is at times extraordinary – even if you are short sighted and have never seen things this detailed before.

Most of the works for which he is best known were created while he was incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital. There is speculation that 'Dadd probably suffered from a form of paranoid schizophrenia'. He appears to have been genetically predisposed to mental illness; two of his siblings were similarly afflicted, while a third had "a private attendant" for unknown reasons.

His paintings include The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke, which he worked on between 1855 and 1864, and the thirty-three watercolour drawings titled Sketches to Illustrate the Passions, which include Grief or Sorrow, Love, and Jealousy, as well as Agony, Raving Madness and Murder. So plenty of demons there.  Like most of his works they feature protagonists whose eyes are fixed in a particularly demonic stare. Dadd also produced many shipping scenes and landscapes during his incarceration, such as the ethereal 1861 watercolour Port Stragglin. These are 'executed with a miniaturist's eye for detail which belie the fact that they are products of imagination and memory'.  But there again, maybe they are not!

Dadd was born at Chatham, Kent, England, the son of a chemist. His aptitude for drawing was evident at an early age, leading to his admission to the Royal Academy of Arts at the age of 20. He was awarded the medal for life drawing in 1840.

In July 1842, Sir Thomas Phillips, the former mayor of Newport, chose Dadd to accompany him as his draftsman on an expedition through Europe to Greece, Turkey, Southern Syria and finally Egypt. In November of that year they spent a gruelling two weeks in Southern Syria, passing from Jerusalem to Jordan and returning across the Engaddi wilderness. Toward the end of December, while travelling up the Nile by boat, Dadd underwent a dramatic personality change, becoming delusional and increasingly violent, and believing himself to be under the influence of the Egyptian god Osiris. His condition was initially thought to be sunstroke.

On his return in the spring of 1843, he was diagnosed to be 'of unsound mind' and was taken by his family to recuperate in the countryside 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 for France.  En route to Paris, Dadd attempted to kill another tourist with a razor, but was overpowered and was arrested by the police.

Dadd confessed to the killing of his father and was returned to England, where he was committed to the criminal department of Bethlem psychiatric hospital (also known as Bedlam). Here and subsequently at the newly created Broadmoor Hospital, Dadd was cared for (and encouraged to continue painting) by  Drs William Wood and Sir W. Charles Hood.

In the hospital he was allowed to continue to paint and it was here that many of his masterpieces were created.  After 20 years at Bethlem, Dadd was moved to the criminal lunatic asylum at Broadmoor, outside London. Here he remained, painting constantly and receiving infrequent visitors until 7 January 1886, when he died, "from an extensive disease of the lungs".

Observations

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• Dadd, Richard - Bacchanalian scene 1862
• Dadd, Richard - Murder
• Dadd, Richard - Come unto these yellow sands
• Dadd, Richard - Crazy Jane
• Dadd, Richard - Falling Bough
• Dadd, Richard - Le Sommeil de Titania
• Dadd, Richard - Oberon and Titania
• Dadd, Richard - The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke [detail]
• Dadd, Richard - The Fairy feller’s master-stroke
• Dadd, Richard - The Passions - Agony