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Lot Essay
The Rabbit Hutch is a recollection of Dadd's childhood in Chatham and probably relates to an actual event. The characters represented are likely to be his former self and his companions, drawn from his uncluttered memory and depicted in an unsentimental way. Patricia Allderidge's observations on Sketch to Illustrate the Passion. Suspense or Expectation of 1855, apply equally to the present watercolour: 'Dadd here paints recollections of his own past with total veracity but without any sense of nostalgia, vividly recapturing the spirit which belongs uniquely to the preoccupations of childhood. The changed perception of childhood which comes with increasing distance from it was to some extent made impossible for Dadd by his isolation in a place where he could never see children' (see P. Allderidge, Richard Dadd, London, 1974, p. 91, no. 97).
In his watercolours Dadd repeats compositional motifs. Most notable in the present watercolour is the large washing line and the wooden fence, seen earlier in Suspense or Expectation. The broken pots are also similar to those in other compositions, particularly those that recall Dadd's Middle Eastern travels. The seriousness of the childrens' undertakings is underlined by their hard staring eyes, a hallmark of Dadd's work; it also relates to the boy in The Child's Problem who has an unsettled, unfocused stare (see P. Allderidge, The Late Richard Dadd, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London, 1974, no. 169).
In terms of technique, The Rabbit Hutch stands out clearly as a work of the 1860s. It compares in mood to the Passion series, but the broad washes of the 1850s are replaced with a pointillist technique that is seen in many of Dadd's later watercolours, including his two Egyptian fantasies of 1865 (Allderidge, Tate catalogue, op. cit., pl. XIII and pl. 38). The stippling and the delicate tonality of pale blue, pink, and sepia give a misty dreamlike atmosphere that anticipates much of his later work in this medium. The only known photograph of Dadd at Bethlem, painting his well known composition Contradition. Oberon and Titiania, see fig. 1 (sold in these Rooms on 12 June 1992, for a record price of £1,650,000), shows Dadd painstakingly completing the picture. Here he is working in oil, but the same meticulous and almost laborious obsession was applied to his work in watercolour.
Recently discovered in a private collection, The Rabbit Hutch has never been recorded in Dadd literature and has not been seen outside the family collection. The watercolour is thought to have been given to a doctor of mental health, Dr Thomas Aitken, MD, a physician and superintendant at the District Lunatic Asylum in Inverness, who graduated in 1858 from the University of Edinburgh. He also worked as a medical assistant at Southern Cross Asylum in Dumfries. It is not known how or when he came into contact with Dadd but the existence of a manuscript letter that has always been with the watercolour suggests a possible connection with Sir Alexander Morison (1779-1866).
Morison was one of the two visiting physicians to Bethlem between 1835 and 1853, and was also visiting physician to the Surrey Asylum until 1856. He came from Newhaven near Edinburgh and returned to Anchorfield, the family estate, when he retired. It is possibly the Scottish connection that brought Aitken and Morison together. In the 1830s Morison employed a number of artists to make portraits of patients in Bethlem and Surrey Asylums to illustrate his book The Physiognomy of Mental Diseases, 1838. The original watercolours are in an album in the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh and are probably those referred to in the letter cited below. It is also thought that the dining-room hung with watercolours (mentioned in the letter) must have been at Morison's house. He was very interested in Dadd, and certainly had a number of his works in his collection.
The letter reads:
I had not much conversation with him. We dined at 1.30 & between that & tea which was at 4.30 ! a good part of the time was occupied in looking over a portfolio full of portraits which I am sure would have interested you, likenesses done by good artists, of an number of his patients, some represented in different stages of madness & then when well, they were mostly from the Surrey Asylum where he used to attend, the rest from Bethlehem. What I thought a more interesting and pleasing study was of a number of watercoloured paintings with which the dining room is hung round as close as they will go by a criminal lunatic in Bethlehem Dadd an artist who when doing a cartoon of St George & the Dragon for the House of Parliament took his poor father for the dragon & killed him. The subjects of the sketches are various sacred, historical, mytholo...
Born in Chatham in 1817, Dadd enjoyed a brilliant early career, winning three silver medals at the Royal Academy school and achieving an effortless distinction among his artistic contemporaries. Beginning to exhibit in 1837, first at Suffolk Street then at the Royal Academy and the British Institution, he revealed a strong inclination towards imaginative painting, concentrating on fairy subjects and gaining a reputation as their leading exponent. In 1842 he was approached by Sir Thomas Phillips, a South Wales solicitor and hero of Chartist riots, to accompany him on a tour of the Middle East. He was recommended by David Roberts, and was expected not only to be a travelling companion but to record the architectural sights.
There was clearly a strong streak of madness in Dadd's family. He was one of seven children, four of whom died insane, including his younger sister Maria Elizabeth, who married the painter John Phillip. In retrospect even his early work sometimes has a manic quality, while his devotion to imaginative subjects seems to strike a warning note in view of what was to follow. At all events, the visual excitement and physical hardship of the ten-month Middle-Eastern tour precipitated a crisis. Dadd returned insane, and in August 1843 murdered his father at Cobham, believing that he was acting as the agent of the Egyptian god Osiris (the tour had included Egypt) who had ordered him to exterminate the devil. Following the murder, he fled to France, where he attempted another and was arrested. Having been extradited to England, he appeared before magistrates at Rochester. His behaviour left no doubt of his disturbed state of mind, and on 22 August 1844, almost a year to the day after killing his father, he was committed to Bethlem Hospital. Dadd remained in Bethlem for twenty years, moving in 1864 to the newly built Broadmoor in Berkshire.
Dadd is a unique phenomenon in British Art, perhaps in Western art in general. Insane for nearly two thirds of his life, he was able, like a traveller with tales of a fabulous country, to send back reports of his mental terra incognita thanks to the miraculous preservation of his talent under the condition of madness. The 1974 Tate exhibition rightly set out to show that Dadd was already, before insanity took over, an artist of rare perception, and that insanity should only be regarded as one of the many influences on his work. This aim was achieved, and we now know that Dadd's work, at all stages of his career, was never less than interesting and often rose to heights of poetic intensity.
We are grateful to Patricia Allderidge of Bethlem Royal Hospital Archive for her help preparing this entry.
In his watercolours Dadd repeats compositional motifs. Most notable in the present watercolour is the large washing line and the wooden fence, seen earlier in Suspense or Expectation. The broken pots are also similar to those in other compositions, particularly those that recall Dadd's Middle Eastern travels. The seriousness of the childrens' undertakings is underlined by their hard staring eyes, a hallmark of Dadd's work; it also relates to the boy in The Child's Problem who has an unsettled, unfocused stare (see P. Allderidge, The Late Richard Dadd, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London, 1974, no. 169).
In terms of technique, The Rabbit Hutch stands out clearly as a work of the 1860s. It compares in mood to the Passion series, but the broad washes of the 1850s are replaced with a pointillist technique that is seen in many of Dadd's later watercolours, including his two Egyptian fantasies of 1865 (Allderidge, Tate catalogue, op. cit., pl. XIII and pl. 38). The stippling and the delicate tonality of pale blue, pink, and sepia give a misty dreamlike atmosphere that anticipates much of his later work in this medium. The only known photograph of Dadd at Bethlem, painting his well known composition Contradition. Oberon and Titiania, see fig. 1 (sold in these Rooms on 12 June 1992, for a record price of £1,650,000), shows Dadd painstakingly completing the picture. Here he is working in oil, but the same meticulous and almost laborious obsession was applied to his work in watercolour.
Recently discovered in a private collection, The Rabbit Hutch has never been recorded in Dadd literature and has not been seen outside the family collection. The watercolour is thought to have been given to a doctor of mental health, Dr Thomas Aitken, MD, a physician and superintendant at the District Lunatic Asylum in Inverness, who graduated in 1858 from the University of Edinburgh. He also worked as a medical assistant at Southern Cross Asylum in Dumfries. It is not known how or when he came into contact with Dadd but the existence of a manuscript letter that has always been with the watercolour suggests a possible connection with Sir Alexander Morison (1779-1866).
Morison was one of the two visiting physicians to Bethlem between 1835 and 1853, and was also visiting physician to the Surrey Asylum until 1856. He came from Newhaven near Edinburgh and returned to Anchorfield, the family estate, when he retired. It is possibly the Scottish connection that brought Aitken and Morison together. In the 1830s Morison employed a number of artists to make portraits of patients in Bethlem and Surrey Asylums to illustrate his book The Physiognomy of Mental Diseases, 1838. The original watercolours are in an album in the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh and are probably those referred to in the letter cited below. It is also thought that the dining-room hung with watercolours (mentioned in the letter) must have been at Morison's house. He was very interested in Dadd, and certainly had a number of his works in his collection.
The letter reads:
I had not much conversation with him. We dined at 1.30 & between that & tea which was at 4.30 ! a good part of the time was occupied in looking over a portfolio full of portraits which I am sure would have interested you, likenesses done by good artists, of an number of his patients, some represented in different stages of madness & then when well, they were mostly from the Surrey Asylum where he used to attend, the rest from Bethlehem. What I thought a more interesting and pleasing study was of a number of watercoloured paintings with which the dining room is hung round as close as they will go by a criminal lunatic in Bethlehem Dadd an artist who when doing a cartoon of St George & the Dragon for the House of Parliament took his poor father for the dragon & killed him. The subjects of the sketches are various sacred, historical, mytholo...
Born in Chatham in 1817, Dadd enjoyed a brilliant early career, winning three silver medals at the Royal Academy school and achieving an effortless distinction among his artistic contemporaries. Beginning to exhibit in 1837, first at Suffolk Street then at the Royal Academy and the British Institution, he revealed a strong inclination towards imaginative painting, concentrating on fairy subjects and gaining a reputation as their leading exponent. In 1842 he was approached by Sir Thomas Phillips, a South Wales solicitor and hero of Chartist riots, to accompany him on a tour of the Middle East. He was recommended by David Roberts, and was expected not only to be a travelling companion but to record the architectural sights.
There was clearly a strong streak of madness in Dadd's family. He was one of seven children, four of whom died insane, including his younger sister Maria Elizabeth, who married the painter John Phillip. In retrospect even his early work sometimes has a manic quality, while his devotion to imaginative subjects seems to strike a warning note in view of what was to follow. At all events, the visual excitement and physical hardship of the ten-month Middle-Eastern tour precipitated a crisis. Dadd returned insane, and in August 1843 murdered his father at Cobham, believing that he was acting as the agent of the Egyptian god Osiris (the tour had included Egypt) who had ordered him to exterminate the devil. Following the murder, he fled to France, where he attempted another and was arrested. Having been extradited to England, he appeared before magistrates at Rochester. His behaviour left no doubt of his disturbed state of mind, and on 22 August 1844, almost a year to the day after killing his father, he was committed to Bethlem Hospital. Dadd remained in Bethlem for twenty years, moving in 1864 to the newly built Broadmoor in Berkshire.
Dadd is a unique phenomenon in British Art, perhaps in Western art in general. Insane for nearly two thirds of his life, he was able, like a traveller with tales of a fabulous country, to send back reports of his mental terra incognita thanks to the miraculous preservation of his talent under the condition of madness. The 1974 Tate exhibition rightly set out to show that Dadd was already, before insanity took over, an artist of rare perception, and that insanity should only be regarded as one of the many influences on his work. This aim was achieved, and we now know that Dadd's work, at all stages of his career, was never less than interesting and often rose to heights of poetic intensity.
We are grateful to Patricia Allderidge of Bethlem Royal Hospital Archive for her help preparing this entry.