Dadd, Richard (1817–86), the first Victorian fairy painter to gain recognition for his genre (see Victorian fairy painting). He trained at London's Royal Academy, and his early works Puck (1841) and Titania Sleeping (1841), like those of other fairy painters, were inspired by Shakespeare. Unfortunately, he suffered from demonic hallucinations, murdered his father, and was incarcerated in Bethlem Hospital's criminal lunatic ward. While enlightened doctors prescribed painting as therapy, the public began to equate fairy painting and madness. Isolated from artistic movements like Impressionism, Dadd continued his esoteric, minutely detailed fairy scenes in Contradiction: Oberon and Titania (1854–8) and the enigmatic Fairy‐;Feller's Master‐Stroke (1855–64).

Bibliography

• Allderidge, Patricia, The Late Richard Dadd (n.d.).
• Greysmith, David, Richard Dadd: The Rock and Castle of Seclusion (1973).

— Mary Louise Ennis