Richard Dadd 1817-1886 a Victorian artist with an incredible aesthetic, one of the most tragic examples of brilliant talent coupled with serious mental illness.

Biography of Richard Dadd

Fourth of nine children. Dadd’s incredible artistic ability was evident from a very young age. He trained in miniature painting, then in 1837 he began his studies at the Royal Academy in London. His virtuosity was obvious, and even marked with a medal, his friends described him as a cheerful, intelligent and cheerful person. In general, Dadd fit comfortably into the art scene.

In the early 1840s, he painted fairies from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, such as Sleeping Titania. His 1842 painting Come to These Yellow Sands is inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Following a long academic tradition, Richard Dadd traveled to Europe and the Middle East with his patron Sir Thomas Phillips in 1842 to paint and study classical art. The Alps, Venice, and then Greece, Constantinople, Cyprus, Beirut and Jerusalem… Dudd began to suffer from headaches. While traveling in Egypt, bouts of delirium began. And sheer aggression. He believed that he was under the influence of the god Osiris. Mistaking his behavior for a serious case of sunstroke, no diagnosis was made prior to his arrival in England. Upon his return in 1843, it became clear that something had changed, the artist was showing disturbing signs of severe mental illness.

Madness, Fairies and Murder.

Dadd was declared “unbalanced” and sent to rehab with his family in Kent, with tragic consequences. The hallucinations intensified, he convinced himself that his father was the devil. And in 1843, during an evening walk in the park, he stabbed him to death. Dadd fled to France, attacking a tourist along the way with a razor. The authorities detained him near the town of Montro.

When the police searched his studio for evidence, they discovered that he had made drawings of friends and acquaintances with their throats cut.

This tragic part of Richard Dadd’s life was, in a sense, in keeping with the expectations of British society in those days. The idea that the line between art and madness is very thin, that there is something subversive, dangerous in art was a very important part of the Victorian cultural environment.

Dadd’s example took the stereotype to its extreme.

After confessing to the murder, he was imprisoned in the Bedlam Criminal Division (the infamous London Bethlehem Royal Hospital). In 1864 he was transferred to the newly opened Broadmoor Center, where he remained until his death in 1886. Psychiatric care in the Victorian era was obviously appalling. But, by the standards of that time, very progressive doctors took care of Dadd, he was even recommended to continue to paint. It was within the walls of the hospital that he created his magnum opus – “The masterful swing of a fabulous woodcutter”, which took him almost 10 years to create.

Contrary to popular misconceptions, Dudd was most creative in moments of clarity. Stunning aesthetics and detail require extraordinary discipline and talent. I do not dare to say, but perhaps the choice of fantastic plots was a way to escape the reality of his life, his illness, his imprisonment and his crimes.

Dadd painted throughout the 42 years of his imprisonment.

While all this time in his work he relied on his own imagination, an incredible visual memory and one famous sketchbook that he took with him from normal life. Some of his smallest postcard-sized works reveal memories of sights he saw during his travels. The hospital staff patronized Dadd’s talent and, in a way, were his sitters. It is believed that “Portrait of a Young Man” (1853) depicts one of the orderlies.

Interest in Dadd’s work awakened with particular force in the second half of the 20th century, becoming a source of inspiration for a whole galaxy of musicians, poets, and novelists. From Queen to Terry Pratchett and Robert Rankin.