Richard Dadd

Richard Dadd is a City of Westminster spot devoted to a British artist born in Chatham in 1817. His imaginative paintings draw on fairy subjects, Shakespearean scenes, and literary sources including Tasso and Byron. Early recognition brought silver medals at the Royal Academy Schools and membership of the artists’ group known as the Clique. He exhibited at Suffolk Street, the Royal Academy, and the British Institution during the late 1830s.

A ten-month journey through the Middle East in 1842 preceded a severe mental health crisis and lifelong confinement. Bethlem Hospital held him from 1844, followed by Broadmoor in Berkshire, where he continued painting despite difficult conditions. Watercolours based on Middle Eastern travels came first, while later works included The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke and Contradiction Oberon and Titania. The latter, painted between 1854 and 1858, shows Oberon and Titania quarrelling among elves, sprites, soldiers, and fantastical creatures. That crowded Shakespearean scene remains a vivid example of Victorian fairy painting and Dadd’s painstaking imagination.