Richard Dadd, Art, Madness and Murder
- Ben Samuel
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
Richard Dadd's artistic legacy has been overshadowed by the murder of his father
Richard Dadd might be more famous for his detailed and elegant paintings had he not spent over forty years in lunatic asylums. Whilst traveling through Europe and the Middle East early in his career, he began to suffer from paranoid delusions and dangerous fantasies. By the time he returned home these delusions had become a full blown mental breakdown. On 28 August 1843 he stabbed his father to death in Cobham Park, near Rochester in Kent, believing him to be the devil in disguise. Dadd had become convinced that he was being called upon by divine forces (usually Osiris) to do battle with the Devil. He fled the scene still wearing his blood stained clothing and attempted to travel to Paris. He was apprehended in France after attempting to kill a french train passenger. It was recognised immediately that he was not responsible for his actions due to his mental illness and he was spared the death penalty. He spent the rest of his life in mental asylums. Much of his most famous painting were produced there and he was encouraged to continue with his artistic output by his carers.
"He said he was impelled to kill his father ('If he was his father', he said) by a feeling that some such sacrifice was demanded by the gods and spirits above. He said that they were walking side by side in Cobham Park when Richard suddenly sprang upon his father and stabbed him in the left side. When his father fell, Dadd thus apostrophised the starry bodies, 'Go,' said he, 'and tell the great god Osiris that I have done the deed which is to set him free" - from Dadd’s case-notes
"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" - from Dadd’s case-notes
Amongst Dadd's most famous works The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke was painted in the State Criminal Lunatic Asylum of Bethlem Royal Hospital. The painting was commissioned by George Henry Haydon, head steward of the hospital at the time. It took Dadd almost a decade to paint and he considered it unfinished.
In order to explain the painting Dadd wrote a prose poem entitled Elimination of a Picture & its Subject—called The Fellers' Master Stroke which can be read here. The painting was gifted to the Tate Gallery in 1963 by the first world war poet Siegfried Sassoon who was a friend of the Dadd family. Sassoon gave the painting to the Tate Gallery “in memory of his friend and fellow officer Julian Dadd, a great-nephew of the artist, and of his two brothers who gave their lives in the first world war”
“The excitement of these scenes has been enough to turn the brain of an ordinary weak-minded person like myself, and often I have lain down at night with my imagination so full of wild vagaries that I have really and truly doubted my own sanity.” - From a letter by Richard Dadd whilst travelling in the Near East
“….On my return from travel, I was roused to a consideration of subjects which I had previously never dreamed of, or thought about, connected with self; and I had such ideas that, had I spoken of them openly, I must, if answered in the world’s fashion, have been told I was unreasonable. I concealed, of course, these secret admonitions. I knew not whence they came, although I could not question their propriety, nor could I separate myself from what appeared my fate. My religious opinions varied and do vary from the vulgar; I was inclined to fall in with the views of the ancients, and to regard the substitution of modern ideas thereon as not for the better. These and the like, coupled with an idea of a descent from the Egyptian god Osiris…” - Richard Dadd
Sir Alexander Morison, depicts one of the physicians who oversaw Dadd's mental healthcare on his estate near Edinburgh. The portrait was painted at the end of Morison's 17 years as consultant to Bethlem Asylum in Surrey. Richard Dadd never visited Scotland due to his incarceration and based the painting on photographs taken by Morison's daughter. The painting has an eerie quality due in no small part to the strange slope of the earth depicted either side of the subject.
Richard Dadd died on 7 January 1886 in Broadmoor Hospital.
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