#portrait of a young man by richard dadd

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men's fashion + art

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Portrait of a Young Man by Richard Dadd, 1853

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Richard Dadd, Portrait of a Young Man. 

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Richard Dadd, Portrait of a Young Man, 1853

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Richard Dadd [1817 – 1886]

Portrait of a Young Man [1853]

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Dadd’s Murder: The Frightful Tale Behind the Famous Fairies

To look at a piece by English painter Richard Dadd is to be transported to another world. Known for his scenes of fairies, supernatural beings, and images of the far east, Dadd crafted his paintings meticulously with a level of detail that leaves the human eye both stunned and deeply engaged, digging through the image and uncovering new elements with every glance. Trained and awarded for his works of art, it is surprising to hear just how (and potentially why) much of his art came to be. There is a chance we may have never been given many of his works of art if it had not been for a single night of madness and bloodshed.  

Puck by Richard Dadd.

Dadd was born in Chatham, Kent, England on August 1st 1817, one of seven children raised by his chemist father after the early death of his mother. His artistic talents were recognized early on in life and before the age of twenty Dadd developed a reputation that many artists could only dream of. He received artistic training at the prestigious Royal Academy of the Arts, his work was exhibited, and in the late 1830s Dadd formed an exclusive “club” with well-known fellow artists Augustus Egg, Alfred Elmore, William Powell Frith, Henry Nelson O'Neil, John Phillip and Edward Matthew Ward. This group, called “The Clique”, rejected the pretentious world of academic art and formed a sketching club where the members would all sketch the same subject matter and have their pieces judged by “non-artists.” He was young, extremely talented, and poised to become one of the greatest names in art, then he took a trip.

In July 1842 Dadd was approached by Sir Thomas Phillips, a Welsh lawyer, politician, and the former mayor of Newport. Phillips was about to embark on an extensive ten-month excursion through parts of Europe, Greece, Turkey, Syria, and Egypt and he wanted the young artist to accompany him. The pair traveled their course with Dadd filling sketchbooks with drawings that he intended to paint once he returned home. The scenes of the far and middle east pressed themselves deeply into the mind of Dadd, but their impression became much more serious than mere images etched in his books. The entire excursion was ten months long but during the last leg in December the pair was traveling up the Nile when Dadd’s personality suddenly took a dramatic shift. The painter was suddenly agitated, violent, and his words became increasingly nonsensical, loosely threaded together with ramblings about Egyptian gods. It was said he was suffering from sunstroke but Phillips was afraid of his traveling companion and they eventually parted ways with Dadd returning home in the spring of 1843. When he returned home he got out of the sun, but his unsettled mind did not dissipate. He was diagnosed with having an “unsound mind” and he and his family relocated to the rural village of Cobham hoping the change in scenery would right Dadd’s mental anguish.

Self portrait of Richard Dadd, 1841.

The family had hopes but on the evening of August 29th 1843 the seriousness of Dadd’s mental state became crystal clear. After convincing his father to go for a walk with him in Cobham Park the young artist snapped and attacked, first punching his father in the head, then unsuccessfully slashing his throat before finally stabbing him in the chest killing him. When the deed was done Dadd raised his arms and yelled to the sky “Go, and tell the great god Osiris that I have done the deed which is to set him free.” He fled the park and began on what he felt was his next mission, to get to Europe and kill Ferdinand I, the Emperor of Austria. He didn’t make it to Austria, but he did get to France and almost killed another person with a razor along the way. August 30th 1843 was Richard Dadd’s last night as a free man. He was arrested and confessed to murdering his father.

If anyone was hoping for clarity once Dadd was arrested they were severely let down once he began explaining his actions. According to the painter, his father was an evil stand-in, the devil, his real father was the Egyptian god Osiris, and he was following instructions to kill this impostor. In his own words, Dadd was “the son and envoy of God, sent to exterminate the men most possessed with the demon.” Upon his arrest he was held in the French asylum at Clermont for ten months before he was finally taken back to England where he faced trial and was committed to the criminal wing of the Bethlem Royal Hospital, now notoriously known as Bedlam.

The exterior of Bethlem Royal Hospital circa 1828.

The image of Victorian-era asylums is often one of cold stagnating cruelty, but it was during his commitment that Dadd began to truly flourish. Hospital reports tell of a man that remained incoherent and delusional with one report from March 21, 1854 stating that “For some years after his admission he was considered a violent and dangerous patient, for he would jump up and strike a violent blow without any aggravation, and then beg pardon for the deed.” But, still able to somehow draw on his artistic past, he was given supplies and encouraged to paint. He threw himself into it with all of his being. Here in the asylum he was free from the opinions and constraints of the fine art world that bred him, here he was able to paint and create his own unfiltered works, a direct line into his deeply scarred mind.

The subject matter of his work ranged from those directly in front of him to intensely intricate fantasy worlds. In 1852 he painted a portrait of his doctor which now hangs in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and it was in the 1850s that he began painting a series of thirty-three watercolor drawings titled Sketches to Illustrate the Passions. These pieces, with titles that run the spectrum of emotion including Pride, Love, Jealousy, Disappointment, Agony-Raving Madness, and Murder, offer their viewer a totally unhindered glimpse into the perceptions of Dadd regarding human emotion, and quite possibly the difficulty he had processing his circumstances.

Dadd’s portrait of his doctor Alexander Morrison, now belonging to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

Agony-Raving Madness by Richard Dadd, 1854.

In 1855 Dadd began work on another project, the precisely executed and unbelievably intricate The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke. Meticulously rendered in nearly 3D realism, the painting depicts the actions surrounding the feller about to cleave a hazelnut with his ax to provide a new carriage for Queen Mab. This was not the first time Dadd painted the fairy world, but this work stands out from his previous projects. The style is markedly different and The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke was actually painted for the head steward at Bethlem Royal Hospital, George Henry Haydon, who was deeply impressed by Dadd’s artistic ability and requested a fairy painting of his own. The painter worked on the scene diligently for nine years, inscribing the back of the canvas with the words “The Fairy-Feller's Master-Stroke, Painted for G. H. Haydon Esqre by Rd. Dadd quasi 1855–64.” Even after nearly a decade of work, Dadd considered it an unfinished piece with the background of the lower left corner left only sketched in. Today The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke is considered to be Dadd’s masterpiece.

The Fairy Fellers' Master-Stroke. 1855–64. Oil on canvas. 54 × 39.5 cm. Tate Gallery, London.

Although it was never clearly stated, a possible reason why this work that Dadd spent nine years on was left incomplete may lay in its “finish” year of 1864. It was in this year that Dadd was transferred to a new facility, Broadmoor, Britain’s first hospital for the criminally insane. Although he never revisited the fairy feller with a brush, the scene and its players remained in Dadd’s mind well after he entered the gates of his new home in Broadmoor. The artist took up a pen and in January 1865 he completed Elimination of a Picture & its Subject—called The Fellers' Master Stroke, an elaborate written account where each character inside his painting is given a name and a role in an accompanying story infused with references to Shakespeare and British folklore.

Dadd would never see the outside of Broadmoor. In his twenty-two years inside its walls he never expressed regret, never apologized for killing his father, and never escaped his delusions. As documented in notes taken inside the hospital during his care, October 24th 1865 reports “No change” and even thirty-four years after murdering his father he still spoke of the need to set Osiris free. And yet, despite his deep illness he painted constantly, his ability to take the images from his eyes and mind and masterfully bring them to life never leaving him.

Richard Dadd painting while institutionalized.

Painting until he physically could no longer manage the task, Richard Dadd died on January 7th 1886 “from an extensive disease of the lungs” which was more than likely tuberculosis. He was sixty-eight years old and had spent forty-two of his years committed to an institution. He was buried in the Broadmoor cemetery.

After his death Dadd remained nearly unknown until the 1960s and 1970s when his work experienced a revival, fueled by his story and the ability to portray him as the epitome of the tragic artist. His story and the recognition of his astonishing talent has carried him through the decades and today some of the many works of Richard Dadd have found homes at a number of prestigious art institutions including the Tate Britain, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Scottish National Portrait Gallery, and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.

Looking at pieces like The Fairy Fellers' Master-Stroke can invoke images of charming whimsy and pure fantasy, a stark contrast to its origin story involving a brilliant mind turned to madness, murder, and the cold walls of Broadmoor.

You can read the full text of  Elimination of a Picture & its Subject—called The Fellers' Master Stroke (1865) here. 

[caveartfair]

The Victorian Artist Who Painted Fairy Worlds from an Asylum

Richard Dadd, Come unto These Yellow Sands, 1842. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

The Victorian artist Richard Dadd painted exquisite, highly detailed canvases filled with fairies and other magical creatures. In his best-known work, The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke (ca. 1855–64), flowers, leaves, and stalks of grass unfurl across the canvas, giving way to a magical world of miniature figures in fanciful dresses and crowns. They gather around a brown-suited gentleman who’s about to cleave an acorn in two with an ax. Yet this central act of violence eerily corresponds to Dadd’s earlier misdeeds: In 1843, in a bout of madness, he killed his father, then assaulted a tourist on a train on his escape. He spent the rest of his life in institutions; the asylum became his studio, where he produced most of his imaginative paintings.

An 1878 census from the United Kingdom lists Dadd as both an “artist” and a “lunatic.” In Victorian England, the latter term was a perfectly acceptable catch-all for sufferers of mental illness. Dadd was hardly the first painter or sculptor with such a diagnosis. Indeed, philosophers and physicians have investigated the link between creativity and madness for millennia. Plato even philosophized about the topic in ancient Greece. Artistic inspiration, he believed, was God-given madness. From Vincent van Gogh hacking off his own ear to Sylvia Plath’s suicide-by-oven, many of our most lauded creative practitioners are, for better or for worse, also remembered for their intense manias and depressions. Dadd offers one of the most tragic examples of inventive brilliance coupled with (poorly treated) mental illness.

Richard Dadd, The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, 1855–64. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Richard Dadd, Portrait of a Young Man, 1853. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Dadd’s early life was unremarkable. He was born in Kent in 1817, and his family moved to London when he was 18. Two years later, he enrolled in the Royal Academy. Dadd became friendly with the up-and-coming painters of his day: Augustus Egg, William Powell Frith, and Edward Matthew Ward, among others. He received awards for his draughtsmanship, and during this time, he was focused on a fairly traditional series of Shakespearean illustrations. In the early 1840s, he painted fairies from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Puck and Titania, the queen of the fairies. His 1842 canvas Come Unto These Yellow Sands takes inspiration from The Tempest. In sum, Dadd fit neatly into Britain’s well-heeled creative scene.

“I think he was very much of his time, right up until he killed his father,” Marc Demarest, who maintains a popular web page about Dadd, told Artsy. Demarest became interested in the artist after seeing The Fairy-Feller’s Master-Stroke at the Tate (where it’s in the permanent collection) in 2005. The obsessive detail, most of all, piqued his curiosity. “It’s not a painting that you can take in in 5 minutes or 15 minutes,” he said. “I still don’t know what it means. When you stand a foot and a half from it and peer into actual work, it’s pretty magical.”

Dadd’s life took its sad, strange turn during a trip across Europe and the Middle East with his patron, Sir Thomas Phillips. The pair embarked in July 1842, crossing the Alps and exploring Venice before setting sail to Greece, Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), Cyprus, Beirut, and Jerusalem, among other cities. Dadd began suffering from headaches. After seeing impressions of the Egyptian god Osiris in Cairo, he also became paranoid, threatening Phillips; Dadd apparently believed he’d been tasked with fighting the devil.

Portrait of Richard Dadd painting Contradiction: Oberon and Titania, ca. 1856. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

When Phillips and Dadd returned to London, Dadd’s father took him to St. Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics. A doctor judged the artist to be insane, though he protested. Father and son journeyed to Cobham (near the family’s first home), where Dadd Sr. may have urged him to accept treatment. Instead, Dadd Jr. lured his father to a park and, on their evening walk, killed him, slashing him with a razor and knife. Dadd fled to France, assaulting a tourist along the way, and then to Calais, Paris, and finally to a town near Montereau, where the authorities detained him. When the police canvassed his studio looking for clues, they found pictures he’d made of friends and acquaintances with their throats slashed, suggesting that Dadd’s murderous scheme had been premeditated.

Even this tragic note in Dadd’s life was, in some ways, in keeping with British society’s expectations in his day. “The idea that art and madness snuggled up right next to each other—that there was something subversive, dangerous, explosive about art—was very much part of the Victorian cultural milieu,” Demarest said. Dadd’s life took the stereotype to the extreme.

British authorities sent Dadd to London’s infamous Bethlem Royal Hospital (informally known as “Bedlam”—the origin of the colloquial term). In 1864, he moved to the newly opened Broadmoor Facility, where he remained institutionalized until his death in 1886. The staff of the facility became Dadd’s patrons and occasional subjects. Portrait of a Young Man (1853), for example, is thought to depict a hospital attendant. In the painting, a man in a dark suit sits on a bench made of tangled wood; the object seems a part of nature. Victorian mental institutions were notoriously horrific. Physicians’ understanding of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (one of which Dadd probably had) was limited at the time, and restraints and opiates served as their major tactics for calming patients. The doctors’ support for Dadd’s painting—they even helped him get supplies—is a humane note in the history of Victorian mental health care.

Richard Dadd, Titania Sleeping, 1841. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Fairies remained a predominant subject for Dadd throughout his life. The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, which he worked on for nearly 10 years, became his magnum opus (and inspired a Queen song of the same name). His interest in the topic, notably, was not delusional, so much as it was part of a larger cultural intrigue. The British and Irish, as scholar Carole Silver writes in her 1986 book On the Origin of Fairies: Victorians, Romans, and Folk Beliefs, were trying to revive their folkloric traditions. Romantic poets like Percy Bysshe Shelley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote about sprites in the early 19th century; their fantastical works fueled the Victorian imagination.

“Though the Romantic spirit hatched the fairies,” Silver writes, “it was the Victorian passion for investigation that nourished them.” Ideas about psychology and the unconscious were emerging, while the dawning Industrial Revolution encouraged the use of science and technology for new discoveries. Fairy mania eventually reached its peak in the early 20th century, when young girls convinced Sherlock Holmes writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that they’d managed to photograph fairies; in 1920, he included the pictures in a magazine article on the theme, and the story became a media sensation.

Dadd transformed a mad cultural obsession into transfixing artwork. “The artist’s illness is unquestionable and so, I think, is his peculiar genius,” Jonathan Jones wrote in a Guardian review of a 2015 exhibition of Dadd’s work. But he notes that in Dadd’s case, his mental illness may not have been connected to his art. “This is just one extraordinary case.…Dadd’s life was desolate. The art he made from it, in flight from it, is a joy.”

from Artsy News

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Richard Dadd, Portrait of a Young Man, 1853.