Richard Dadd : Beyond Bedlam

Fascinating exhibition at the Royal Academy on the 19th century artist Richard Dadd who spent a large part of his life in Bedlam and Broadmore.

I knew Dadd from his fairy pictures but the exhibition showed that there was a lot more to his work. I knew he had been in Bedlam and had assumed the fairy works were from that period but many of them were from before when he was painting scenes from Shakespeare.

He also travelled widely in the Eastern Mediterranean with his friend Sir Thomas Phillips and here were beautiful sketches from the period which he later developed into paintings. However it was sadly on this period that he began experiencing psychosis and sadly murdered his father thinking he was a devil.

He seems to have been well treated and liked by the staff at Bedlam and a number of them seem to have commissioned work from him for themselves or the hospital and he painted portraits of some of them.

A large section was devoted to a series of figurative watercolours including a set called "The Passions" illustrating a negative emotion or life experience others were humorous scenes of everyday life.

I came away with a vision of a man who became overwhelmed by life but who found a way to deal with it via his art.

Closes 25 October 2026

Reviews

Times

Guardian

Telegraph

Evening Standard