richard dadd
The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke 1864
Some of my favourite paintings were by the the Victorian artist Richard Dadd. Dadd was born in Kent, on 1 August 1817and was admitted to the Royal Academy of Arts at the age of 20.
In July 1842 Sir Thomas Phllips, the former mayor of Newport, chose Dadd to accompany him as his draughtsman on an expedition through Europe, through Greece Turkey, Southern Syria and finally Egypt. Toward the end of of the trip, Dadd underwent a dramatic personality change, becoming delusional, increasingly violent, and believing himself to be under the influence of the Egyptian God Osiris. His condition was initially thought to be sunstroke and exhaustion.
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 Kent countryside. Soon after, he having become convinced that his father was the Devil in disguise and Dadd killed him with a knife and fled to France. En route to Paris, Dadd attempted to kill a fellow passenger with a razor but was overpowered and arrested by police. He was returned to England, where he was committed to the criminal department of Bethlem psychiatric hospital (also known as Bedlam).
Dadd probably suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. Two of his siblings had the condition, while a third had "a private attendant" for unknown reasons. In hospital, Dadd was fortunate to receive (comparative) progressive treatment from his doctors and encouraged to continue painting. He painted many of his masterpieces in Bethlem and Broadmoor, including The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke, and Contradiction: Oberon and Titania Many of his later works are masterpieces on a tiny scale, featuring protagonists whose eyes are fixed in a peculiar, unfocused stare, executed with a miniaturist's eye for detail.. even though they are entirely products of his complex and wild imaginings and extraordinary memory for people and places.
