Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Richard Dadd was one of the most strikingly original and technically ac- complished painters of the Victorian era. His enormous almost virtuosic talents were obvious from an early age but the brilliant career which seemed inevitably his was cut short brutally and abruptly. when as a young man he lapsed into violent insanity. Dadd’s affliction culmi- nated in the gruesome murder of his father and led to life-long confinement in a criminal lunatic asylum. But even here he continued to paint fulfilling his early promise of compositional ingenuity albeit in a mode totally at variance with the conventions of Victorian salon art. De- prived of external influence and stimuli alike. Dadd’s style especially in his early fairy pictures combined a singular purity and beauty with a world of tapestry-like detail rich fantasy and obsessional allegory. Patricia Allderidge. Archivist of the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospitals where the artist passed much of his imprisonment is uniquely equipped to be Richard Dadd’s biographer. She has undertaken extensive research sifting through secondary and little known primary sources to construct a carefully documented narrative of Dadd’s career one which corrects many misconceptions and brings new material to light. In addition to tracing the artist’s life from his childhood and seminal travels to the Middle East to his madness and confine- ment at Bethlem and Broadmoor Miss Allderidge also provides a detailed and sensitive analysis of Dadd’s work fully documented with 115 illustrations fifteen of which are in colour. She has in short produced a complete picture in words and images of Richard Dadd as both a man and as an artist and her study will long serve as a vitally informative and attractive introduction to the vision of this extraordinary Victorian painter. (SP)