I’m looking forward to the launch, or rather relaunch, of my novel on June 30th. It was first published by Peter Owen in 2013. When I was writing this novel I was deeply impressed by Dadd’s heroic determination to carry on painting and drawing throughout his long incarceration. The doctors in the Bethlem Hospital, or Bedlam, as it was known to generations of Londoners, recognised Dadd’s talent and even collected his paintings and drawings. Much of his work has probably has been lost or destroyed but it is perhaps more surprising that we have as much as we do. It is only very recently that the art of the mentally ill has been widely respected. In my novel Dr Hood, the Resident Physician in the hospital, discusses his work with his friend Haydon, the Steward:
“ ‘ Do you think he is a great artist?’
‘You are a better judge of art than I. But I believe his work is spoiled by an excess of fantasy. Art must improve us and only an artist who is decent and self-controlled and reasonable can produce truly great work - Charles Eastlake, for example, who gives us such charming and educational scenes and also played a practical role as Keeper of the National Gallery. Yet there is interest in Dadd’s work, Morison has just sent me five pounds for some drawings. I had to return the money, for his work must stay inside our hospital.’“
In my novel, Richard Dadd himself doubts the worth of his own art:
“All my life I have been trying to reach those heights, to make just one painting that will be worth looking at after I die. Of course I have failed, my whole life has been a catastrophe, I have betrayed that original vision and often fear that the doctors here only humour me when they praise my work. How could great or even good art come out of Bedlam?”
In 1877, after Dadd had been transferred to Broadmoor, a journalist described him as “A recluse doing the honour of his modest unpretending abode; a pleasant visaged old man with a long and flowing snow white beard, with mild blue eyes that beam benignly through spectacles when in conversation.”
The Child’s problem. Richard Dadd (1857)
Dadd gave this strange and sinister drawing to his Head Keeper, Charles Neville, whose great grandson gave it to the Tate in 1955.
Robbie Ross, Oscar Wilde’s friend and literary executor, was an early admirer of Dadd’s work.
The flight out of Egypt Richard Dadd (1849-50)
Sacheverell Sitwell found The Flight Out of Egypt in the picture frame department of the Army and Navy stores and bought it. It was then bought by Tate Britain in 1947.
Siegfried Sassoon became friendly with three of Dadd’s great nephews, Stephen, Edmund and Julian, during the First World War. Two of the brothers were killed in the war but the third brother, Julian, survived the war although, sadly, he later committed suicide. Siegfried Sassoon presented The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke, which is reproduced on the cover of my novel, to Tate Britain "in memory of his friend and fellow officer Julian Dadd, a grandnephew of the artist, and of his [Julian's] two brothers [Stephen Gabriel and Edmund] who gave their lives in the First World War” It was first exhibited in 1935.
Richard Dadd’s reputation has soared as attitudes to mental illness have changed. As Jonathan Jones wrote in The Guardian (Wed 17 Jun 2015) :
“We are transfixed by Dadd’s fantastical paintings not because he had a mental illness, but because they are nothing like the leaden Victorian art of the day.”
This summer there will be an exhibition of Dadd’s work at the Royal Academy:
Richard Dadd
Beyond Bedlam
25 July - 25 October 2026
The Jillian and Arthur M. Sackler Wing of Galleries | Burlington House
On Thursday July 23 at 7.30 pm I will be giving an illustrated talk about my novel and how I came to write it at The Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre, Holborn Library, 32-38 Theobalds Road, WC1X 8PA.
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www.mirandamiller.info
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