Richard Dadd: The Fairy Worlds of an artistic "Criminal lunatic" murderer
Hello to all the lovely creatures out there!
I hope everyone had some good holiday break! Today we are back again and we are once again, diving in deep!I n today's post we explore how mental illnesses can affect the creation of art. That is presicely why we will be discussing about an artist and his works that were deeply affected from his mental illness but at the same time, creating art was the one way that actually assisted in this state. Introducing to you, painter Richard Dadd!
Some info about him: Dadd was born at Chatham, Kent on 1 August 1817. He was an English painter of the Victorian Era, that is well known for his depictions of fairies and other supernatural creatures, Orientalist scenes, and enigmatic genre scenes rendered with obsessively minuscule detail. He was educated at King's School, Rochester where he later continued to the Royal Academy Art Schools at the age of 20. He was awarded the medal for life drawing in 1840. Along with other prestigious artists of his era, they founded The Clique consisting of artists such as William Powell Frith, Augustus Egg, Henry O'Neil etc. Among his best-known early works are the illustrations he produced for ''The Book of British Ballads'' (1842) and a frontpiece he designed for "The Kentish Coronal" (1840).
In July 1842, Sir Thomas Phillips, the former mayor of Newport, chose Dadd to accompany him as his draughtsman on an expedition through Europe to Greece, Turkey, Southern Syria and finally Egypt. In November of the same year, they spent a gruelling two weeks in Southern Syria, and towards the end of December, while travelling up the Nile by boat, Dadd underwent a dramatic personality change, becoming delusional, increasingly violent, and believing himself to be under the influence of the Egyptian god Osiris. Initially his condition was thought to be a sunstroke as it was not unheard of before beacuse of the wild temperatures.
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 thiat year, having become convinced with that his father was the Devil in disguise, he killed him with a knife and fled to France. Onhis way there, Dadd attempted to kill a fellow passenger with a razor but was overpowered and arrested by the police. He then confessed to killing his father and was returned to England, where he was commited to the criminal department of Bethlem psychiatric hospital and later at Broadmoor Hospital.
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Today it is mostly accepted that Dadd probably had paranoid schizophrenia as it was evident in other members of his family. Two of his siblings had the condition, while a third had a "private attendant" for unknown reasons.
In hospital, Dadd was encouraged to continue painting and in 1852 he created a protrait of one of his doctros, Alexander Morison. Dadd painted many of his best pictures in Bethlem and Broadmoor, including The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke which he worked between 1855 and 1864. Also dating from the 1850s are the 33 watercolour drawings titled Sketches to Illustrate the Passions, which include Grief of Sorrow, Love, and Jealousy as well as Agony-Raving Madness and Murder.
His works 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 duing 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. In general, he used broad washes of colour, but his work in both oil and watercolour is generally notable for its very fine detail. In his most characteristic and truly personal style he employed a technique of stippling, derived from miniature painting, to produce pale, dreamlike watercolours of extreme delicacy.
For the rest of his life, Dadda remained to Broadmoor Hospital, 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 today in the Bethlem Royal Hospital Museum.
Richard Dadd seems to be another case of a tormented artist that his mental illness dectated his art. However, at the same time it seems that creating art was his only way to communicate and remain in the grasps of sanity. We can only continue to observe numerous examples similar to Dadd's where art remained a stable in a constant changing life of up and downs. At the same time it is very interesting that he decided to continue painting dreamy landscapes and figures, as if he never fully left this dreamy world of his, himself.
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