richard dadd
on a once-in-a-lifetime world Tour This artist’s life changed forever 1817-1886
On the brink of breaking onto an international stage, Richard Dadd’s promising career as an artist was cut down during the very opportunity that could’ve catapulted him to fame instead of infamy.
In July 1842, after studying at the Royal Academy of Arts and co-founding an artists group called The Clique, Dadd joined his patron Sir Thomas Phillips on a tour of the Middle East. In Egypt, Dadd began acting erratically, believing himself to be connected with the Egyptian god, Osiris. Aware of his fragile state of mind, Dadd wrote that his “imagination [was] so full of vagaries that I have really and truly doubted my own sanity”.
With Dadd clearly unwell, the tour began their return home, but in Italy Dadd became convinced that the Pope was intending to harm him and schemed to attack him, though he never fulfilled this. When he arrived back in England, his mental health continued to deteriorate and he began to consider his father as the Devil in disguise. In August 1843, he stabbed his father to death and fled to France. After attacking a passenger, Dadd was caught by the French authorities and extradited back to England. Here, Dadd was placed in Bedlam psychiatric hospital. In 1864, Dadd was moved to the newly built Broadmoor Hospital, where he died in 1886. No longer confined by the whims of patrons and buyers, Dadd’s confinement in an asylum liberated his creativity, and he continued to paint until has dying day. It’s now acknowledged that Dadd likely suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.