Richard Dadd

First published on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Richard Dadd: Beyond Bedlam’ Royal Academy of Arts, London 25 July – 25 October 2026 Supported by

Copyright © 2026 Royal Academy of Arts, London Any copy of this book issued by the publisher is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including these words being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.

With additional support from Colin McCorquodale Miss Rosemary Lomax-Simpson The Dr Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable Foundation Special thanks to Bethlem Gallery, Bethlem Museum of the Mind, Victoria and Albert Museum and Yale Center for British Art for their generous support of this exhibition.

This exhibition has been made possible as a result of the Government Indemnity Scheme. The Royal Academy of Arts would like to thank HM Government for providing indemnity and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport and Arts Council England for arranging the indemnity.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Royal Academy of Arts Burlington House Piccadilly London W1J 0BD www.royalacademy.org.uk

Contents

President’s Foreword Acknowledgements

6

‘Time out o’ mind’: The Art of Richard Dadd

10

9

nicholas tromans

The Child’s Problem: Dadd and the Enigma of History

EU Authorised Representative EAS Europe, Mustamäe tee 50, 10621 Tallinn, Estonia gpsr.requests@easproject.com British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

32

sarah thomas

A Deadly Inheritance

38

c o r a g i l r oy - wa r e

Understanding Richard Dadd’s Illness

46

r o b e r t h o wa r d

ISBN 978-1-915815-19-4 e x h i b i t i o n c u r at o r s

Nicholas Tromans Sylvie Broussine with Rina Sagoo e x h i b i t i o n o r g a n i s at i o n

Poppy Fairfax with Laura Laing p h o t o g r a p h i c a n d c o p y r i g h t c o - o r d i n at i o n

Giulia Ariete e x h i b i t i o n c ata lo g u e

Royal Academy Publications Florence Dassonville, Production and Distribution Co-ordinator Carola Krueger, Production and Distribution Manager Peter Sawbridge, Head of Publishing and Editorial Director

Distributed outside the United States and Canada by ACC Art Books Ltd, Riverside House, Dock Lane, Melton, Woodbridge, IP12 1PE

with section introductions by n ata s h a f y f f e d a d d a n d t h e r o ya l a c a d e m y

Distributed in the United States and Canada by ACC Art Books, 6 West 18th Street, Suite 4B, New York, NY 10011

the eastern mediterranean tour bethlem reminiscences of the eastern mediterranean

editorial note

dadd and his doctors

This publication includes historical terms and language that reflect common usage during Dadd’s lifetime. They are used here to maintain the historical accuracy of the material.

All works reproduced are by Richard Dadd (1817–1886) unless otherwise stated.

Dimensions of all works of art are given in centimetres, height before width (before depth). i l l u s t r at i o n s

Copy-editing and proofreading: Alison Hissey Design: Maggi Smith Colour origination and printing: Gomer Press, Wales

Catalogue Plates

Page 2: detail of cat. 11 Page 7: detail of cat. 33 Page 8: detail of cat. 29

Pages 102–103: detail of cat. 33 Pages 105–106: detail of cat. 35 Page 152: detail of cat. 22

t h e p a s s i o n s a n d w at e r c o l o u r s o f t h e 1 8 5 0 s beyond bethlem to broadmoor

Notes Further Reading Lenders to the Exhibition Photographic Acknowledgements Index

54 68 82 83 96 112 130

150 153 154 154 155

First published on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Richard Dadd: Beyond Bedlam’ Royal Academy of Arts, London 25 July – 25 October 2026 Supported by

Copyright © 2026 Royal Academy of Arts, London Any copy of this book issued by the publisher is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including these words being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.

With additional support from Colin McCorquodale Miss Rosemary Lomax-Simpson The Dr Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable Foundation Special thanks to Bethlem Gallery, Bethlem Museum of the Mind, Victoria and Albert Museum and Yale Center for British Art for their generous support of this exhibition.

This exhibition has been made possible as a result of the Government Indemnity Scheme. The Royal Academy of Arts would like to thank HM Government for providing indemnity and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport and Arts Council England for arranging the indemnity.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Royal Academy of Arts Burlington House Piccadilly London W1J 0BD www.royalacademy.org.uk

Contents

President’s Foreword Acknowledgements

6

‘Time out o’ mind’: The Art of Richard Dadd

10

9

nicholas tromans

The Child’s Problem: Dadd and the Enigma of History

EU Authorised Representative EAS Europe, Mustamäe tee 50, 10621 Tallinn, Estonia gpsr.requests@easproject.com British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

32

sarah thomas

A Deadly Inheritance

38

c o r a g i l r oy - wa r e

Understanding Richard Dadd’s Illness

46

r o b e r t h o wa r d

ISBN 978-1-915815-19-4 e x h i b i t i o n c u r at o r s

Nicholas Tromans Sylvie Broussine with Rina Sagoo e x h i b i t i o n o r g a n i s at i o n

Poppy Fairfax with Laura Laing p h o t o g r a p h i c a n d c o p y r i g h t c o - o r d i n at i o n

Giulia Ariete e x h i b i t i o n c ata lo g u e

Royal Academy Publications Florence Dassonville, Production and Distribution Co-ordinator Carola Krueger, Production and Distribution Manager Peter Sawbridge, Head of Publishing and Editorial Director

Distributed outside the United States and Canada by ACC Art Books Ltd, Riverside House, Dock Lane, Melton, Woodbridge, IP12 1PE

with section introductions by n ata s h a f y f f e d a d d a n d t h e r o ya l a c a d e m y

Distributed in the United States and Canada by ACC Art Books, 6 West 18th Street, Suite 4B, New York, NY 10011

the eastern mediterranean tour bethlem reminiscences of the eastern mediterranean

editorial note

dadd and his doctors

This publication includes historical terms and language that reflect common usage during Dadd’s lifetime. They are used here to maintain the historical accuracy of the material.

All works reproduced are by Richard Dadd (1817–1886) unless otherwise stated.

Dimensions of all works of art are given in centimetres, height before width (before depth). i l l u s t r at i o n s

Copy-editing and proofreading: Alison Hissey Design: Maggi Smith Colour origination and printing: Gomer Press, Wales

Catalogue Plates

Page 2: detail of cat. 11 Page 7: detail of cat. 33 Page 8: detail of cat. 29

Pages 102–103: detail of cat. 33 Pages 105–106: detail of cat. 35 Page 152: detail of cat. 22

t h e p a s s i o n s a n d w at e r c o l o u r s o f t h e 1 8 5 0 s beyond bethlem to broadmoor

Notes Further Reading Lenders to the Exhibition Photographic Acknowledgements Index

54 68 82 83 96 112 130

150 153 154 154 155

President’s Foreword

The Victorian painter Richard Dadd (1817–1886) has exercised a strong hold on the imagination of audiences in recent decades. Although he is known largely as a painter of fairy worlds, his art also encompasses portraiture, watercolours influenced by his Eastern Mediterranean travels, and scenes inspired by literature and legend. Many of Dadd’s works were produced while he was a patient at Bethlem and Broadmoor hospitals, where he spent most of his life. The first survey of his art since the 1970s, this exhibition brings together Dadd’s most impressive paintings, watercolours and drawings, enabling us to consider all aspects of his practice.

The Royal Academy is the show’s ideal venue, for Dadd made his name as a student of the Royal Academy Schools in the late 1830s. He exhibited a series of minutely executed fairy paintings of great imaginative power in the Academy’s Annual Exhibitions, drawing upon Shakespeare for his subjectmatter. His skill at rendering detail led him to be invited on an ambitious tour of the Eastern Mediterranean in 1842–43, and his sketchbooks reveal his exceptional powers of observation as he records the people, buildings and landscapes he saw on these travels. Dadd began to experience delusions during the long journey, and on his return to England he killed his father.

He spent the remaining 43 years of his life in hospitals. Despite no longer having a formal audience, Dadd continued to make compelling paintings of extraordinary technical quality, based on his memories, his imagination and his carefully annotated sketchbooks and drawings.

The exhibition has been organised by the Royal Academy in collaboration with lead curator Dr Nicholas Tromans, specialist in Richard Dadd and nineteenth-century British art. We thank Dr Tromans for initiating the exhibition, for his thoughtful selection of loans and the rigorous research he shares in his insightful catalogue essay. We are also grateful to Dr Sarah Thomas, Dr Cora Gilroy-Ware, Professor Robert Howard and Natasha Fyffe for their invaluable contributions to this catalogue.

The exhibition would not have been possible without the remarkable generosity of our many lenders, to all of whom we owe our thanks. A special debt of gratitude is due to Bethlem Museum of the Mind, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Yale Center for British Art for their exceptional support.

We are also indebted to Patricia Allderidge, whose enrichment of the scholarship around Dadd in recent decades has been invaluable.

We extend our thanks to all the Royal Academy staff who have lent their support to the project, chief among them Sylvie Broussine, Associate Curator; Rina Sagoo, Curatorial Assistant; Natasha Fyffe, Assistant Curator; Poppy Fairfax, Exhibitions Manager; Laura Laing, Assistant Exhibitions Manager; and Giulia Ariete, Rights and Reproductions Manager. Our thanks go also to Simon Wallis, Secretary and Chief Executive; Idoya Beitia, Deputy Director of Exhibitions; Julien Domercq, Senior Curator; and Joanna Weston, Senior Exhibitions Manager, for their support and guidance throughout. The Royal Academy’s Publications team, led by Peter Sawbridge, has overseen the creation of this catalogue, beautifully designed by Maggi Smith. We acknowledge warmly the support of former colleagues, among them Tim Marlow, Sarah Lea, Per Rumberg, Adrian Locke, Andrea Tarsia, Axel Rüger, Helena Cooper and Paulina Shearing. Finally, we thank the exhibition’s designer Eric Pearson, its graphic designer Patrick Morrissey at Unlimited and its lighting designer Satu Streatfield; their creativity and expertise have resulted in the exhibition’s elegant installation.

We would like to thank the Tavolozza Foundation and Cockayne – Grants for the Arts, for their support of this exhibition. Additionally we would like to thank Colin McCorquodale, Miss Rosemary Lomax-Simpson, and The Dr Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable Foundation.

Rebecca Salter cbe pra President, Royal Academy of Arts

President’s Foreword

The Victorian painter Richard Dadd (1817–1886) has exercised a strong hold on the imagination of audiences in recent decades. Although he is known largely as a painter of fairy worlds, his art also encompasses portraiture, watercolours influenced by his Eastern Mediterranean travels, and scenes inspired by literature and legend. Many of Dadd’s works were produced while he was a patient at Bethlem and Broadmoor hospitals, where he spent most of his life. The first survey of his art since the 1970s, this exhibition brings together Dadd’s most impressive paintings, watercolours and drawings, enabling us to consider all aspects of his practice.

The Royal Academy is the show’s ideal venue, for Dadd made his name as a student of the Royal Academy Schools in the late 1830s. He exhibited a series of minutely executed fairy paintings of great imaginative power in the Academy’s Annual Exhibitions, drawing upon Shakespeare for his subjectmatter. His skill at rendering detail led him to be invited on an ambitious tour of the Eastern Mediterranean in 1842–43, and his sketchbooks reveal his exceptional powers of observation as he records the people, buildings and landscapes he saw on these travels. Dadd began to experience delusions during the long journey, and on his return to England he killed his father.

He spent the remaining 43 years of his life in hospitals. Despite no longer having a formal audience, Dadd continued to make compelling paintings of extraordinary technical quality, based on his memories, his imagination and his carefully annotated sketchbooks and drawings.

The exhibition has been organised by the Royal Academy in collaboration with lead curator Dr Nicholas Tromans, specialist in Richard Dadd and nineteenth-century British art. We thank Dr Tromans for initiating the exhibition, for his thoughtful selection of loans and the rigorous research he shares in his insightful catalogue essay. We are also grateful to Dr Sarah Thomas, Dr Cora Gilroy-Ware, Professor Robert Howard and Natasha Fyffe for their invaluable contributions to this catalogue.

The exhibition would not have been possible without the remarkable generosity of our many lenders, to all of whom we owe our thanks. A special debt of gratitude is due to Bethlem Museum of the Mind, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Yale Center for British Art for their exceptional support.

We are also indebted to Patricia Allderidge, whose enrichment of the scholarship around Dadd in recent decades has been invaluable.

We extend our thanks to all the Royal Academy staff who have lent their support to the project, chief among them Sylvie Broussine, Associate Curator; Rina Sagoo, Curatorial Assistant; Natasha Fyffe, Assistant Curator; Poppy Fairfax, Exhibitions Manager; Laura Laing, Assistant Exhibitions Manager; and Giulia Ariete, Rights and Reproductions Manager. Our thanks go also to Simon Wallis, Secretary and Chief Executive; Idoya Beitia, Deputy Director of Exhibitions; Julien Domercq, Senior Curator; and Joanna Weston, Senior Exhibitions Manager, for their support and guidance throughout. The Royal Academy’s Publications team, led by Peter Sawbridge, has overseen the creation of this catalogue, beautifully designed by Maggi Smith. We acknowledge warmly the support of former colleagues, among them Tim Marlow, Sarah Lea, Per Rumberg, Adrian Locke, Andrea Tarsia, Axel Rüger, Helena Cooper and Paulina Shearing. Finally, we thank the exhibition’s designer Eric Pearson, its graphic designer Patrick Morrissey at Unlimited and its lighting designer Satu Streatfield; their creativity and expertise have resulted in the exhibition’s elegant installation.

We would like to thank the Tavolozza Foundation and Cockayne – Grants for the Arts, for their support of this exhibition. Additionally we would like to thank Colin McCorquodale, Miss Rosemary Lomax-Simpson, and The Dr Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable Foundation.

Rebecca Salter cbe pra President, Royal Academy of Arts

Fig. 33 William Etty, Hylas and the Water Nymphs, 1833.

Oil on canvas, 88.3 × 111.8 cm. Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire. Inv. NT 515509 Fig. 34 Henry Howard, Venus and Cupid, 1809. Oil on canvas, 91.4 × 71.8 cm.

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund, B1984.19.3

42

in Hylas and the Water Nymphs (fig. 33), first exhibited in 1833. The integration of Etty’s patent eroticism into Dadd’s memories and academic precedents is surely behind Angela Carter’s description of his work as ‘the quaint pornography of never-never land’.14 Etty is responsible for the allegation that Dadd’s paintings are a particular kind of pornography, but the ‘quaint’ aspect perceived by Carter, and the sense that his works take place in a utopia, points to the influence of yet another predecessor: Henry Howard, Dadd’s teacher at the Royal Academy Schools. At one point, when Etty’s name was at its most contentious, Howard had been perceived as Etty’s rival. In 1821 a critic compared their nudes: ‘nakedness without purity is offensive and indecent, and in Mr Etty’s canvasses is mere dirty flesh… Howard, whose subjects… require naked figures, never disgusts the eye or the mind. Let Mr Etty strive to a taste equally pure.’ 15 Building on both, Dadd tempers Etty’s unabashed, potentially pornographic eroticism with Howard’s self-consciously chaste and incorporeal approach to the human form. In contrast to Etty, Howard established his reputation via his undeniable skill in drawing classical sculptures, faithfully replicating the lineaments of casts and marbles onto the painted surface. Stilted and plastic, his female figures, such as the half-draped goddess in Venus and Cupid (fig. 34), are at a distance from the bodies

of actual living women. By the time Dadd showed Titania Sleeping, Howard’s figures were, because of their plastic incorporeality, dismissed as ‘tame commonplaces’: bodies that were too ‘pure’, not real, not human enough.16 Carter’s description captures the distance imposed by Howard between his figures and real human flesh, a distance Dadd preserves in his fairy scenes. Among the residual admirers of Howard’s art as the century progressed, his London studio was seen as a kind of ‘never-never land’. In 1835, a critic describes walking in from the ‘crowded street’ as a journey into an alternative universe, an ‘enchanted ground’ populated by creatures that seemed ‘to breathe a more ethereal atmosphere than that which clogs the aspirations of ordinary mortals’. 17 In addition to ancient sculptures, the chastened contours of his figures are indebted to his favourite Old Master, the seventeenth-century French painter Nicolas Poussin, who himself was known as a consummate painter of sculptural forms. In his Royal Academy lectures, Howard encouraged his students, including the young Dadd, to emulate Poussin in a language indicative of the nude’s alienation from living flesh, praising his figures as ‘fine instances of scientific ordonnance’. 18 Dadd’s time as a student at the Royal Academy Schools (1837–40) coincided not only with Howard’s stint as Professor of Painting, but with the opening

of the National Gallery. Interest in Poussin within British artistic circles was at its height during the time in which the foundations of this collection were being laid. Acquired in 1820, around the time of Maria Callcott’s widely read Memoirs of the Life of Nicholas Poussin, one of the objects in this burgeoning national hoard was Poussin’s A Bacchanalian Revel Before a Term (fig. 35), a work featuring a group of dancing nymphs and satyrs that sets a precedent for the fairy revellers in Titania Sleeping (cat. 11). Dancers in a similar circle, or ‘round’, to use Shakespeare’s word, recur in other early paintings by Dadd. In Poussin’s Bacchanalian Revel, the circle is loose and broken by the force of drunken movement; in Puck (cat. 10), the companion picture to Titania Sleeping, the circle is complete. A ring of naked bodies is dwarfed by the fairy servant. Crowned by the bell

of a convolvulus, Puck’s illuminated form serves as a kind of maypole. The Poussin circle – itself based on sculpted classical reliefs of Dionysian processions – is rendered tighter and neater as it is integrated by Dadd with Shakespeare’s words and other aspects of the painter’s visual inheritance.

Writing of the dancing round in Titania Sleeping, a critic in the Literary Gazette praised Dadd’s ability to make this topos appear fresh: somehow, his ‘conception of the fairy circle boasts of originality, even after the hundreds of times it has been painted’. 19 The originality this critic perceives in the work stems not from Dadd’s portrayal of the figures per se, but from the kinship between the painting and contemporary theatre, including the recent staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Covent Garden, featuring Lucia Elizabeth Vestris – a celebrated

Fig. 35 Nicolas Poussin, A Bacchanalian Revel Before a Term, 1632–33. Oil on canvas, 98 × 142.8 cm.

National Gallery, London, inv. NG62

43

Fig. 33 William Etty, Hylas and the Water Nymphs, 1833.

Oil on canvas, 88.3 × 111.8 cm. Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire. Inv. NT 515509 Fig. 34 Henry Howard, Venus and Cupid, 1809. Oil on canvas, 91.4 × 71.8 cm.

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund, B1984.19.3

42

in Hylas and the Water Nymphs (fig. 33), first exhibited in 1833. The integration of Etty’s patent eroticism into Dadd’s memories and academic precedents is surely behind Angela Carter’s description of his work as ‘the quaint pornography of never-never land’.14 Etty is responsible for the allegation that Dadd’s paintings are a particular kind of pornography, but the ‘quaint’ aspect perceived by Carter, and the sense that his works take place in a utopia, points to the influence of yet another predecessor: Henry Howard, Dadd’s teacher at the Royal Academy Schools. At one point, when Etty’s name was at its most contentious, Howard had been perceived as Etty’s rival. In 1821 a critic compared their nudes: ‘nakedness without purity is offensive and indecent, and in Mr Etty’s canvasses is mere dirty flesh… Howard, whose subjects… require naked figures, never disgusts the eye or the mind. Let Mr Etty strive to a taste equally pure.’ 15 Building on both, Dadd tempers Etty’s unabashed, potentially pornographic eroticism with Howard’s self-consciously chaste and incorporeal approach to the human form. In contrast to Etty, Howard established his reputation via his undeniable skill in drawing classical sculptures, faithfully replicating the lineaments of casts and marbles onto the painted surface. Stilted and plastic, his female figures, such as the half-draped goddess in Venus and Cupid (fig. 34), are at a distance from the bodies

of actual living women. By the time Dadd showed Titania Sleeping, Howard’s figures were, because of their plastic incorporeality, dismissed as ‘tame commonplaces’: bodies that were too ‘pure’, not real, not human enough.16 Carter’s description captures the distance imposed by Howard between his figures and real human flesh, a distance Dadd preserves in his fairy scenes. Among the residual admirers of Howard’s art as the century progressed, his London studio was seen as a kind of ‘never-never land’. In 1835, a critic describes walking in from the ‘crowded street’ as a journey into an alternative universe, an ‘enchanted ground’ populated by creatures that seemed ‘to breathe a more ethereal atmosphere than that which clogs the aspirations of ordinary mortals’. 17 In addition to ancient sculptures, the chastened contours of his figures are indebted to his favourite Old Master, the seventeenth-century French painter Nicolas Poussin, who himself was known as a consummate painter of sculptural forms. In his Royal Academy lectures, Howard encouraged his students, including the young Dadd, to emulate Poussin in a language indicative of the nude’s alienation from living flesh, praising his figures as ‘fine instances of scientific ordonnance’. 18 Dadd’s time as a student at the Royal Academy Schools (1837–40) coincided not only with Howard’s stint as Professor of Painting, but with the opening

of the National Gallery. Interest in Poussin within British artistic circles was at its height during the time in which the foundations of this collection were being laid. Acquired in 1820, around the time of Maria Callcott’s widely read Memoirs of the Life of Nicholas Poussin, one of the objects in this burgeoning national hoard was Poussin’s A Bacchanalian Revel Before a Term (fig. 35), a work featuring a group of dancing nymphs and satyrs that sets a precedent for the fairy revellers in Titania Sleeping (cat. 11). Dancers in a similar circle, or ‘round’, to use Shakespeare’s word, recur in other early paintings by Dadd. In Poussin’s Bacchanalian Revel, the circle is loose and broken by the force of drunken movement; in Puck (cat. 10), the companion picture to Titania Sleeping, the circle is complete. A ring of naked bodies is dwarfed by the fairy servant. Crowned by the bell

of a convolvulus, Puck’s illuminated form serves as a kind of maypole. The Poussin circle – itself based on sculpted classical reliefs of Dionysian processions – is rendered tighter and neater as it is integrated by Dadd with Shakespeare’s words and other aspects of the painter’s visual inheritance.

Writing of the dancing round in Titania Sleeping, a critic in the Literary Gazette praised Dadd’s ability to make this topos appear fresh: somehow, his ‘conception of the fairy circle boasts of originality, even after the hundreds of times it has been painted’. 19 The originality this critic perceives in the work stems not from Dadd’s portrayal of the figures per se, but from the kinship between the painting and contemporary theatre, including the recent staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Covent Garden, featuring Lucia Elizabeth Vestris – a celebrated

Fig. 35 Nicolas Poussin, A Bacchanalian Revel Before a Term, 1632–33. Oil on canvas, 98 × 142.8 cm.

National Gallery, London, inv. NG62

43

d a d d a n d t h e r o ya l a c a d e m y

Richard Dadd (1817–1886) was born in Chatham, a historic maritime town in Kent, and attended grammar school in Rochester where he began drawing regularly from the age of thirteen. In 1834, Dadd’s father took over a gilding business in London and the family moved to Suffolk Street. Nearby in Trafalgar Square, the new National Gallery building opened in 1838 with the Royal Academy of Arts in its East Wing.

Dadd aspired to enter the Royal Academy Schools, where entrance was dependent on pupils’ ability to draw from antiquity. To prepare, Dadd honed his observational skills by drawing from antique sculptures in the British Museum. He was admitted as a probationer to the Academy Schools on 3 January 1837 and became a full student in December of the same year. Records paint Dadd as a model student: he attended the Antique School more often in 1838 than any other student, and won medals for his work in the Life Drawing and Painting Schools. Among the visiting tutors at that period were J. M. W. Turner and Daniel Maclise, whose literary and mythological imagery was a decisive influence upon Dadd’s early work.

While a student at the Academy, Dadd formed a sketching group called the Clique with other students, notably William Powell Frith and Augustus Leopold Egg. The group met weekly and engaged in drawing literary subjects, such as from Byron and Shakespeare, as well as portraits of one another in imagined character. A surviving example is Portrait of Augustus Egg in Character (cat. 6), where the sitter is depicted in what

can be presumed to be a civil war costume. Members would critique each other’s works to encourage improvement, and according to John Imray, a friend who attended their meetings, ‘…Dadd’s if not most accurate in drawing, were certainly the best in treatment.’1 When Dadd began to send paintings for sale at London exhibitions, English history and literature fuelled his subjectmatter. One of the earliest known examples is Scene from Hamlet (cat. 1), exhibited 1840, which captures the moment in which the protagonist is haunted by the ghost of his father, who urges him to vengeance.

The following year, 1841, Dadd made a great impact by exhibiting two fairy subjects from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Puck and Titania Sleeping (cats 10, 11) at the Society of British Artists, Suffolk Street, and the Royal Academy respectively. These two works exercise minute detail to create a supernatural realm within the human world.

Inspired by Maclise, Dadd creates curious circles of fairy beings around his central figures, which critics at the time praised for their originality.2 Titania Sleeping, Dadd’s early masterpiece, demonstrates a combination of his expertise in academic figure drawing, with ambitious displays of the imagination that enliven the literary subjects. In Puck, dramatic lighting and a foliage border thrown into shadow elicit the feeling that the viewer is peering into a revelrous scene not to be witnessed by human eyes.

1 Scene from Hamlet, 1840 Oil on canvas, 102.2 × 86.4 cm Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

54

d a d d a n d t h e r o ya l a c a d e m y

Richard Dadd (1817–1886) was born in Chatham, a historic maritime town in Kent, and attended grammar school in Rochester where he began drawing regularly from the age of thirteen. In 1834, Dadd’s father took over a gilding business in London and the family moved to Suffolk Street. Nearby in Trafalgar Square, the new National Gallery building opened in 1838 with the Royal Academy of Arts in its East Wing.

Dadd aspired to enter the Royal Academy Schools, where entrance was dependent on pupils’ ability to draw from antiquity. To prepare, Dadd honed his observational skills by drawing from antique sculptures in the British Museum. He was admitted as a probationer to the Academy Schools on 3 January 1837 and became a full student in December of the same year. Records paint Dadd as a model student: he attended the Antique School more often in 1838 than any other student, and won medals for his work in the Life Drawing and Painting Schools. Among the visiting tutors at that period were J. M. W. Turner and Daniel Maclise, whose literary and mythological imagery was a decisive influence upon Dadd’s early work.

While a student at the Academy, Dadd formed a sketching group called the Clique with other students, notably William Powell Frith and Augustus Leopold Egg. The group met weekly and engaged in drawing literary subjects, such as from Byron and Shakespeare, as well as portraits of one another in imagined character. A surviving example is Portrait of Augustus Egg in Character (cat. 6), where the sitter is depicted in what

can be presumed to be a civil war costume. Members would critique each other’s works to encourage improvement, and according to John Imray, a friend who attended their meetings, ‘…Dadd’s if not most accurate in drawing, were certainly the best in treatment.’1 When Dadd began to send paintings for sale at London exhibitions, English history and literature fuelled his subjectmatter. One of the earliest known examples is Scene from Hamlet (cat. 1), exhibited 1840, which captures the moment in which the protagonist is haunted by the ghost of his father, who urges him to vengeance.

The following year, 1841, Dadd made a great impact by exhibiting two fairy subjects from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Puck and Titania Sleeping (cats 10, 11) at the Society of British Artists, Suffolk Street, and the Royal Academy respectively. These two works exercise minute detail to create a supernatural realm within the human world.

Inspired by Maclise, Dadd creates curious circles of fairy beings around his central figures, which critics at the time praised for their originality.2 Titania Sleeping, Dadd’s early masterpiece, demonstrates a combination of his expertise in academic figure drawing, with ambitious displays of the imagination that enliven the literary subjects. In Puck, dramatic lighting and a foliage border thrown into shadow elicit the feeling that the viewer is peering into a revelrous scene not to be witnessed by human eyes.

1 Scene from Hamlet, 1840 Oil on canvas, 102.2 × 86.4 cm Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

54

12 Evening, c. 1841 Oil on panel, 23 × 19 cm Patricia Allderidge

66

13 The Haunt of the Fairies, c. 1841 Oil on canvas, 61 × 51 cm Private collection c/o Martin Beisly Fine Art

67

12 Evening, c. 1841 Oil on panel, 23 × 19 cm Patricia Allderidge

66

13 The Haunt of the Fairies, c. 1841 Oil on canvas, 61 × 51 cm Private collection c/o Martin Beisly Fine Art

67

15.11 Ermoupoli on the Island of Syros in the Aegean Sea, 1842–43 Pencil on paper, 13.9 × 20.5 cm Victoria and Albert Museum. Acquired July 26 1892, from W. P. T. Phillips, a relation of Sir Thomas Phillips.

D.252-1892

76

77

15.11 Ermoupoli on the Island of Syros in the Aegean Sea, 1842–43 Pencil on paper, 13.9 × 20.5 cm Victoria and Albert Museum. Acquired July 26 1892, from W. P. T. Phillips, a relation of Sir Thomas Phillips.

D.252-1892

76

77

20 The Letter Writer, 1863 Watercolour with pen and ink on paper, 29.5 × 20.7 cm Yale Center for British Art, Gift of Michael D. Coe, Yale MAH 1968

86

21 Studies of heads and figures, 1842/43 Watercolour on paper, 17 × 25 cm The Warden and Scholars of Winchester College

87

20 The Letter Writer, 1863 Watercolour with pen and ink on paper, 29.5 × 20.7 cm Yale Center for British Art, Gift of Michael D. Coe, Yale MAH 1968

86

21 Studies of heads and figures, 1842/43 Watercolour on paper, 17 × 25 cm The Warden and Scholars of Winchester College

87

28 The Flight out of Egypt, 1849–50 Oil on canvas, 101 × 126.4 cm Tate: Purchased 1947

28 The Flight out of Egypt, 1849–50 Oil on canvas, 101 × 126.4 cm Tate: Purchased 1947

43 Jesus Christ Walking on the Sea, 1852 Watercolour on paper, 26.1 × 35.9 cm Victoria and Albert Museum. 33-1878

114

44 Robin Hood, 1852 Watercolour and pencil on paper, 35.9 × 25.7 cm Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

45 Juvenile Members of the Yacht Club, 1853 Watercolour and pencil on paper, 35.9 × 25.7 cm Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

115

43 Jesus Christ Walking on the Sea, 1852 Watercolour on paper, 26.1 × 35.9 cm Victoria and Albert Museum. 33-1878

114

44 Robin Hood, 1852 Watercolour and pencil on paper, 35.9 × 25.7 cm Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

45 Juvenile Members of the Yacht Club, 1853 Watercolour and pencil on paper, 35.9 × 25.7 cm Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

115

81 A Wayside Inn, 1871 Watercolour on card, 13 × 22 cm Courtesy of Bethlem Museum of the Mind

82 Night and Day, 1864 Watercolour on paper, 14.8 × 34.8 cm The Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. Purchased, 1939

146

83.1–2 Banks & Co Edinburgh, after designs by Richard Dadd Certificates from the Society for Improving the Conditions of the Insane to attendants qualifying for awards (for a male attendant, above; for a female attendant, below), 1865 (details) Engravings, each sheet 33.4 × 20.7 cm Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh

147

81 A Wayside Inn, 1871 Watercolour on card, 13 × 22 cm Courtesy of Bethlem Museum of the Mind

82 Night and Day, 1864 Watercolour on paper, 14.8 × 34.8 cm The Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. Purchased, 1939

146

83.1–2 Banks & Co Edinburgh, after designs by Richard Dadd Certificates from the Society for Improving the Conditions of the Insane to attendants qualifying for awards (for a male attendant, above; for a female attendant, below), 1865 (details) Engravings, each sheet 33.4 × 20.7 cm Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh

147

Lady Purves Peter Rice Esq Erica Roberts Sir Paul and Lady Ruddock Mrs Janice Sacher Lady Henrietta St George Mr Ali Sarikhani Ulrike Schwarz-Runer and Hakon Runer Dr Shirley Sherwood OBE Mr Jeremy Sillem Mrs Marianna E Simpson Selina Skipwith Mrs Jane Smith Miss Sarah Straight Mrs Ziona Strelitz Mark and Dana Strong Mr Anthony J Todd Mrs Kirsten Tofte Jensen Mr Andrew Tseng Ms Roxane Vacca John and Carol Wates The Duke and Duchess of Wellington Ms Cheyenne Westphal Ms Christine Westwood-Davis Mrs Adriana Winters and those who wish to remain anonymous YOUNG PATRONS Adnan Bashir Mr Nicholas Bonsall Mr Rory Cameron Shiri Chapman-Daniel Mr Matthew Charlton Miss XiaoMeng Cheng Laetitia Contat Desfontaines Mr Michael Cox Sophie Dickson Mr Duncan Forbes Dr Brian Fu Mr William Goad James Gould Miss Sophia Grenzebach Katherine Hu Ms Georgia Hughes Mr Louis Jacquier Mr Tobias Kay Miss Minnie Kemp Miss Victoria Kleiner Ms Daria Kocherova Ms Ning Kong Miss Hyesung Lim Mr Jean-David Malat Jessie Merwood Mr Thomas Mustier Miss Mimi Nguyen Mr Garth Oates Milaap Patel Danielle Petitti Ms Julie Scotto Fazilet Seçgin Daniil Shagramanyants James Simpson Mr Thomas Sittek Mr John Smith Lindsay Smith

Gigi Surel Ryan Sebastian Taylor Mr and Mrs Harry Walker Ms Cynthia Wu Miss Julie Zhanazar Sofia Zhevago and those who wish to remain anonymous PATRON DONORS Kate de Rothschild Agius and Marcus Agius CBE Mr Brynjar Agnarsson Mrs Judith A Agnarsson Mr William Alsop Mrs Leslie Bacon Mr Christopher Battersby Ms Linda Bennett and Mr Philip Harley Mrs J K M Bentley, Liveinart Caroline Bruce Blake Mr Richard Brayshaw Ms Cass Breen Mr Alex Casbolt Mr and Mrs Jonathan Clarke Mr Richard Clarkson Mr and Mrs Paul Collins Mr Alasdair Cross Mr John Crosthwait Mr Richard Curtis Mr Don Cuthbert Mr Saman Dallali Mr Marcus De Luca Mr David Dutton Mr Richard Edwards Mrs Sarah Elson Mr Michael Engler Ms Mary Fellowes Ms Katherine Finerty Ms Emma Forrest Mrs Alison Fortescue Mr Andreas Gerber-Frizzoni Mrs E-Len Fu Mr Lewis Dalton Gilbert Mrs Mirella Gilpin Peter and Elizabeth Goulds James Hall Mr Harry Hastings Mrs S Hayward Mrs Jo Heywood Mrs Gretchyn Hise Miss Florence Horswell Mr Tim Hutchins Caroline James Lady Jay of Ewelme CBE Mr Sebastian Kaufmann Mr Arinder Khabra Mr Martin Kramer Mr Lukas Kroulik Miss Joanna Lee Dr Peng Hui Lee Mrs Paula Lent Mr Abraham Loubser Ms Varda Lotan Mr Becket McGrath Mr Keir McGuinness Mrs Ali Mackie

Mrs Victoria E McLoughlin Sir David Manning Mrs Aytan Mehdiyeva Shaun Miller Mr Mark Munday Geraldine Murphy Mr Stephen O’Reilly Dr Greg Parston Mr Matthew Paton Miss F Pierre-Pierre Mr Andrew Pitt Mr Adam and Mrs Michelle Plainer Mr Basil Postan Ms Lynn Reynolds Mr Paul Reynolds Peter T. Rippon The Michael and Nicola Sacher Charitable Trust Mr Andrew Semple Mrs Lisa Seymour David and Heather Shaw Mr John Simmons Karen Smith Mr M Hockley Smith Mr Michael Stiff Dr Alison Steele Mr Paul Taylor Mr Paul Thompson Mr Charles Tongue Miss Marina Walker The Celia Walker Art Foundation Dr Cecilia Wells Miss Emma Williams Lucy Williams Mr Mark Wippell Mr Adam Wood Miss Kathy Wood The William Brake Foundation Mr Stefano Zuppet and those who wish to remain anonymous

Lisa Reuben Bianca Roden Sally Tennant OBE Lady Ina Sarikhani Weston Katy Wickremesinghe The Hon William Yerburgh

TRUSTEES OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY TRUST Registered Charity No. 1067270

CORPORATE MEMBERSHIP OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS Launched in 1988, the Royal Academy’s Corporate Membership Scheme offers company benefits for staff, clients and community partners and access to the Academy’s facilities and resources. We thank all members for their valuable support and continued enthusiasm.

CORPORATE PARTNERS AXA XL Claridge’s Convex UK Services Limited (Convex Group) Edwardian Hotels House of Creed Insight Investment Natalia Cola Foundation Stewarts

PREMIER A&O Shearman BNY Chanel Charles Stanley Convex UK Services Limited (Convex Group) Evelyn Partners EY FTI Consulting JM Finn KPMG LLP Rothschild & Co Sotheby’s

CORPORATE SUPPORTERS Amathus BNY, Anniversary Partner of the Royal Academy of Arts Bottega Veneta Claridge’s David Zwirner Fortnum & Mason Jack Shainman Gallery Jhaveri Contemporary Champagne Louis Roederer Sotheby’s

HONORARY PRESIDENT His Majesty King Charles III TRUSTEES Batia Ofer (Chair) Paulo Pereira (Vice-Chair) President (ex officio) Treasurer (ex officio) Secretary and Chief Executive (ex officio) Esha Arora Stefan Bollinger Ivor Braka Melanie Clore Martin Ephson OBE Pesh Framjee Denise Gardner Rosemary Leith Berners-Lee Natalie Livingstone Sébastien Mazella di Bosco Scott Mead

EMERITUS AND HONORARY TRUSTEES Lord Aldington Susan Burns Sir David Cannadine FBA Sir Trevor Chinn CVO John Coombe Elizabeth Crain Lord Davies of Abersoch CBE Sir Lloyd Dorfman CBE Ambassador Edward E Elson John Entwistle OBE Michael Gee HRH Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece C Hugh Hildesley Anya Hindmarch CBE Susan Ho Clive Humby OBE The Lady Lever of Manchester Sir Sydney Lipworth KC The Rt Hon Lord Luce GCVO DL Philip Marsden Dame Carolyn McCall DBE Sir Keith Mills GBE DL Ludovic de Montille Lady (Alison) Myners John Raisman CBE Sir Simon Robertson Maryam Sachs The Hon Richard S Sharp David Stileman Robert Suss Peter Williams

Van Cleef & Arpels Viking CORPORATE Bloomberg LP BNP Paribas Christie’s Clifford Chance LLP Digitalis Eastdil Secured Hakluyt & Company HSBC Marie Curie Pictet Rathbone Investment Management Ltd The Royal Society of Chemistry Sisk Teneo Trowers & Hamlins Value Retail Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP ASSOCIATE Bank of America The Boston Consulting Group UK LLP The Cultivist Deutsche Bank AG Generation Investment Management LLP Imperial College Healthcare Charity Lazard CORPORATE FOUNDING BENEFACTORS BNY Index Ventures Newton Investment Management Sisk Sky