5 July -11 July 2008
The Body Imprisoned But The Mind Free – The Extraordinary Art Of A Killer Locked Away For More Than Forty YearsRichard Dadd spent more than 40 years in asylums for the criminally insane after killing his father yet despite being imprisoned for almost two-thirds of his life he became one of Victorian England’s finest artists. Now the most important loan exhibition of his works for decades is being staged by the dealer Andrew Clayton-Payne as part of Master Drawings London, which celebrates the capital’s pre-eminence as a centre for collecting and studying drawings and watercolours. Dreams of Fancy, which includes works loaned from the Bethlem Royal Hospital where Dadd was incarcerated, takes place at 14 Old Bond Street, London W1 from 2-11 July 2008. Dadd was a recognized artist who had already exhibited at the Royal Academy in London when he began to feel concerned about his own state of mind during a painting trip to the Middle East in 1842. “At times 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 of my own sanity,” he wrote to his fellow artist William Powell Frith. A few months later Dadd arrived back in England suffering from delusions that he was pursued by devils and believing that Osiris, the Egyptian god of the dead, was ‘the supreme being’ controlling his actions. In August 1843 Dadd stabbed his father Robert to death in a park near Rochester, Kent, believing him to be the devil in disguise. He fled to France, where he was arrested after trying to kill another traveller with a razor and extradited back to Britain. Even in Victorian England, which was less sympathetic to mental illness than today, Dadd’s madness was recognized and he was certified insane before his murder trial began. He was ordered to be detained ‘until Her Majesty’s pleasure shall be known’ – effectively a life sentence – in the Bethlem Hospital in London (now the site of the Imperial War Museum). He spent the next 42 years there and in the newly-built criminal lunatic asylum at Broadmoor, Berkshire, where he died in 1886 aged 68. Yet throughout this time – initially in the bleak and overcrowded criminal lunatic department and later in more comfortable confinement – Dadd continued to paint in oil and watercolour producing landscapes and seascapes, scenes from history and literature, portraits, reminiscences from his early lost freedom and fairy paintings, the latter now regarded as his masterpieces. Dreams of Fancy charts his journey from sanity to insanity with more than 20 watercolours and drawings loaned by private collectors and by the Bethlem Royal Hospital, which is now in Beckenham, south London, and is raising funds to establish Britain’s first full-time archive and museum dedicated to the understanding of mental illness. Many of the works in Mr Clayton-Payne’s exhibition are rarely seen in public and it is the most important show devoted to Dadd for 35 years. The exhibition reveals how Dadd dug deep into his memories and inner resources to keep painting in his grim new surroundings. Reminiscence of the River Medway at Chatham, a pencil and watercolour port scene, was produced in 1857, at least fifteen years after he must have last seen the sailing ships clustered in the harbour. Sometimes he painted those around him, a notable example in Dreams of Fancy being the sensitive Portrait of John McDonald, who was the attendant in charge of Dadd’s ward at Bethlem Hospital. Yet sometimes the limitations of the world where he was to spend the rest of his life become apparent. Sketch of an Idea for Crazy Jane, an 1855 watercolour, ostensibly depicts a female subject yet the face is very masculine. Dadd would not have seen any women, except for occasional visitors, for many years. In a series of Sketches to Illustrate the Passions in the 1850s he showed a mixture of reactions to his own illness and history. In Murder he preferred to depict the archetypal story of Cain and Abel, disengaging himself from the killing of his father, but Agony - Raving Madness, is a deeply personal expression of his own condition, struggling not against the loosely hanging chains but against the agony of his own tormented mind. Dreams of Fancy is one of a number of specially themed exhibitions by dealers taking part in Master Drawings London from 5-11 July. It starts three days earlier than the other shows and is the only one where the exhibits are not for sale. A total of 20 dealers will show works ranging from the 15th century to the present day in galleries within easy walking distance of one another in Mayfair and St James’s. The event, founded in 2001, has reinforced London’s position as an important centre for the international drawings market and attracts collectors and museum curators from around the world. It includes talks and gallery tours. June 2008 Archive |