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Lot Essay
Painted by the artist when he was approximately 24 years old (having graduated from the Royal Academy Schools, where he won two silver medals) the present work provides a rare and intriguing glimpse of Richard Dadd a year before his tumultuous and life-changing tour of the Middle East - and subsequent committal to Bethlem (Bedlam) Asylum (now the Imperial War Museum), and later the newly created ‘Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum’.
Executed with a light, masterful handling of paint, Dadd holds the viewer’s eye contact with a direct, confident and perceptive gaze – it is easy to imagine such a man chairing ‘The Clique’ meetings, where he and his fellow artists (including William Powell Frith, Augustus Leopold Egg and John Phillip) would meet to discuss issues of contemporary art, over bread, cheese and ale. The feathery lightness of the brushstrokes are reminiscent of his friend Frith’s, while the overall image is of a character one would expect to feature in a Dickens novel. It is his striking pallor (emphasized by his deep red lips and pink flush on his cheeks) that perhaps gives some premonition as to the difficulties that lay ahead.
The change in Dadd’s fortune was preceded by an invitation (upon the recommendation of David Roberts, R.A.) from Sir Thomas Phillips, the Mayor of Newport, to accompany him on a tour of the Near East and produce topographical records of the places visited – which included France, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Syria, Lebanon, Jerusalem, Jordan, Bethlehem, Jericho and Egypt. The journey commenced on 16 July 1842. It was whilst travelling that Dadd began to display signs of illness, attributed to sunstroke. To the concern of his companions his behaviour became increasingly disturbed and erratic: on the voyage between Alexandria and Malta Dadd watched Phillips playing cards with the ship’s captain, believing that the game was for the captain’s soul, and stopping in Rome on the return leg of the journey, he felt a compulsion to attack the Pope; it was only the tight security that prevented him from acting on his compulsion.
Upon arriving in Paris Phillips urged Dadd to seek medical advice – to which the artist’s reaction was to flee back to London. Augustus Leopold Egg, one of the first to see him upon his return, was deeply shocked and immediately went to Frith’s studio, breaking down in tears, saying that it was thought their friend was suffering from sunstroke. Perhaps an indication as to the fluctuating nature of his condition, Dadd appeared shortly after and Frith could deduce nothing wrong with him. However, the artist started to cause increasing worry to his friends and family by stating fiends were following him, with the ‘Great Fiend’ searching for his whereabouts. When his concerned friend William Bell Scott invited him to supper, after dining Dadd suddenly fled, later explaining that he was being watched. The symptoms Richard was displaying are now thought to be that of paranoid schizophrenia.
Dadd contacted his father, saying that he would like to ‘disburden his mind to him’, and the two (at Richard’s insistence) travelled to one of their favourite places, Cobham, staying at the Ship Inn. After arriving they had supper and then set off for a walk at about 9pm. It was around two hours later that, as the two approached a chalk pit, Paddock Hole, Dadd attacked his father with a concealed knife and razor: Robert’s body was discovered the following day. The police were alerted, who, after searching his rooms at Newman Street, London, discovered Richard’s drawings of his friends, each with a brushstroke of red across their throat.
It was immediately thought that Dadd had committed suicide and parties were sent out to recover his body. However, the artist had actually fled to France (hiring a boat for ten to take him across the channel) explaining away his dishevelled appearance by saying he had fallen out of a coach. H.T. Dunn recorded that on ‘his way to Paris [by train], he spent the journey in conversation with a fellow passenger. Dadd began to fancy his companion was the devil incarnate, who it was his mission to kill. It seemed borne in upon him that if the sun sank in serene and unclouded splendour, his fellow-traveller’s life must be spared. Luckily it was a serene sunset.’
It was on a coach ride through the forest of Valence that the voices that had commanded him to go to Austria to kill the Emperor started to instruct him to kill another fellow traveller: ‘At last, wearing with the contention, he resolved to leave the question to kill or not to kill to the stars, one of which, seen from the diligence window, he knew to be Osiris. If Osiris moved nearer to a neighbouring star, he would take it as an unmistakable mandate to destroy. If Osiris increased the distance between himself and the other star, Dadd might spare the stranger’s life. The two starts grew nearer, all doubt was over, and his mission, from which there was no escape, was to kill’. After attacking the gentleman with a razor and inflicting four deep cuts, Dadd was overpowered, arrested, and committed (without trial) to a French asylum.
In 1844, Richard was returned to England where he spent the rest of his life institutionalised, creating some of his finest works, including The Flight out of Egypt (1849-50, Tate Britain) Contradiction – Oberon and Titania (1854-8, Private Collection) and The Fairy Feller’s Master-stroke (1855-64 Tate Britain), the latter inspiring a song of the same title by Queen.
Executed with a light, masterful handling of paint, Dadd holds the viewer’s eye contact with a direct, confident and perceptive gaze – it is easy to imagine such a man chairing ‘The Clique’ meetings, where he and his fellow artists (including William Powell Frith, Augustus Leopold Egg and John Phillip) would meet to discuss issues of contemporary art, over bread, cheese and ale. The feathery lightness of the brushstrokes are reminiscent of his friend Frith’s, while the overall image is of a character one would expect to feature in a Dickens novel. It is his striking pallor (emphasized by his deep red lips and pink flush on his cheeks) that perhaps gives some premonition as to the difficulties that lay ahead.
The change in Dadd’s fortune was preceded by an invitation (upon the recommendation of David Roberts, R.A.) from Sir Thomas Phillips, the Mayor of Newport, to accompany him on a tour of the Near East and produce topographical records of the places visited – which included France, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Syria, Lebanon, Jerusalem, Jordan, Bethlehem, Jericho and Egypt. The journey commenced on 16 July 1842. It was whilst travelling that Dadd began to display signs of illness, attributed to sunstroke. To the concern of his companions his behaviour became increasingly disturbed and erratic: on the voyage between Alexandria and Malta Dadd watched Phillips playing cards with the ship’s captain, believing that the game was for the captain’s soul, and stopping in Rome on the return leg of the journey, he felt a compulsion to attack the Pope; it was only the tight security that prevented him from acting on his compulsion.
Upon arriving in Paris Phillips urged Dadd to seek medical advice – to which the artist’s reaction was to flee back to London. Augustus Leopold Egg, one of the first to see him upon his return, was deeply shocked and immediately went to Frith’s studio, breaking down in tears, saying that it was thought their friend was suffering from sunstroke. Perhaps an indication as to the fluctuating nature of his condition, Dadd appeared shortly after and Frith could deduce nothing wrong with him. However, the artist started to cause increasing worry to his friends and family by stating fiends were following him, with the ‘Great Fiend’ searching for his whereabouts. When his concerned friend William Bell Scott invited him to supper, after dining Dadd suddenly fled, later explaining that he was being watched. The symptoms Richard was displaying are now thought to be that of paranoid schizophrenia.
Dadd contacted his father, saying that he would like to ‘disburden his mind to him’, and the two (at Richard’s insistence) travelled to one of their favourite places, Cobham, staying at the Ship Inn. After arriving they had supper and then set off for a walk at about 9pm. It was around two hours later that, as the two approached a chalk pit, Paddock Hole, Dadd attacked his father with a concealed knife and razor: Robert’s body was discovered the following day. The police were alerted, who, after searching his rooms at Newman Street, London, discovered Richard’s drawings of his friends, each with a brushstroke of red across their throat.
It was immediately thought that Dadd had committed suicide and parties were sent out to recover his body. However, the artist had actually fled to France (hiring a boat for ten to take him across the channel) explaining away his dishevelled appearance by saying he had fallen out of a coach. H.T. Dunn recorded that on ‘his way to Paris [by train], he spent the journey in conversation with a fellow passenger. Dadd began to fancy his companion was the devil incarnate, who it was his mission to kill. It seemed borne in upon him that if the sun sank in serene and unclouded splendour, his fellow-traveller’s life must be spared. Luckily it was a serene sunset.’
It was on a coach ride through the forest of Valence that the voices that had commanded him to go to Austria to kill the Emperor started to instruct him to kill another fellow traveller: ‘At last, wearing with the contention, he resolved to leave the question to kill or not to kill to the stars, one of which, seen from the diligence window, he knew to be Osiris. If Osiris moved nearer to a neighbouring star, he would take it as an unmistakable mandate to destroy. If Osiris increased the distance between himself and the other star, Dadd might spare the stranger’s life. The two starts grew nearer, all doubt was over, and his mission, from which there was no escape, was to kill’. After attacking the gentleman with a razor and inflicting four deep cuts, Dadd was overpowered, arrested, and committed (without trial) to a French asylum.
In 1844, Richard was returned to England where he spent the rest of his life institutionalised, creating some of his finest works, including The Flight out of Egypt (1849-50, Tate Britain) Contradiction – Oberon and Titania (1854-8, Private Collection) and The Fairy Feller’s Master-stroke (1855-64 Tate Britain), the latter inspiring a song of the same title by Queen.