Richard Dadd (1817-1886)

Résumé du livre

Richard Dadd (1817-1886) was an artist who at 26 stabbed his father, believing him to be the devil, and spent the next 43 years in Bethlem Hospital and its successor, Broadmoor Asylum. But he kept on painting, and a small exhibition of his work at Andrew Clayton-Payne, 14 Old Bond Street W1 (July 2-11), shows that he lost none of his powers after the murder. There are two notable pictures from the years before his incarceration - a dainty nude, identifiable as a fairy by the fact that she is no taller than the grass she is crouching in, and a splendid painting of the sun setting in rich colours over Jerusalem. In prison he continued to paint landscapes from memory, but it is his Sketches to Illustrate the Passions that make the greatest impression from this period. They are pictures that he was probably able to paint only because he had gone mad.