A middle-aged man, his beard streaked with white, is seated in front of a circular canvas on which faint outlines of figures are discernible. Holding a paintbrush to the picture surface, he is looking away from the canvas, his pale eyes trained on something only he can see. This is the artist Richard Dadd, photographed in London’s Bethlem Hospital around 1857, more than a decade after he was incarcerated at the national institution, which treated “the criminally insane.” In 1843, Dadd killed his father after developing symptoms of what would now be diagnosed as schizophrenia; he essentially vanished into the Victorian psychiatric system, where he remained until his death, in 1886.
The paintings he left are strange, ranging from literary and biblical scenes to pure fantasy. In recent decades, however, Dadd has gone from a connoisseur’s curiosity to a consequential figure in Victorian art, a status conclusively demonstrated by the Royal Academy of Arts’ new exhibition, “Richard Dadd: Beyond Bedlam.”
