Richard Dadd
1817-1886
Dadd was born at Chatham, Medway in 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. With William Powell Frith, Augustus Egg, Henry O’Neil and others, he founded The Clique, of which he was generally considered the leading talent.
In July of 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, Palestine and finally Egypt. While traveling up the Nile by boat, Dadd underwent a dramatic personality change, becoming delusional and increasingly violent. The myriad of unaccustomed sights and experiences of this journey changed the work of the painter, and he exhibited the first signs of the insanity that was to define the rest of his life.
On his return in the spring of 1843, he was diagnosed to be of unsound mind and his family was advised to take overwrought Richard for a stay in the country to calm him down. Tragically insane painter murdered his father with a knife and fled for France. Dadd intended to kill the Austrian Emperor, but en route to Paris Dadd attempted to murder another fellow passenger on a stagecoach in France, and was arrested. Dadd confessed to the murder of his father and was returned to England.
He spent the rest of his life in institutions for the insane, where he was generally well-treated and encouraged to continue to paint. Which condition he suffered from is unclear, but it is usually understood to be a form of schizophrenia.
Many of his masterpieces were created, including his most celebrated painting, The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, the thirty-three watercolor drawings titled Sketches to Illustrate the Passions, which include Grief or Sorrow, Love, and Jealousy, as well as Agony-Raving Madness and Murder. 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 incarceration, such as the ethereal 1861 watercolor Port Straggling. These are executed with a miniaturist’s eye for detail which belies the fact that they are products of imagination and memory. The pictures painted by Dadd are densely packed with fantastic fairy figures, and are both fascinating original works of art, and a record of his schizophrenia.
Richard Dadd died in the lunatic asylum at Broadmoor, outside London on January 7, 1886, “from an extensive disease of the lungs.”
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