Lot 228: Richard Dadd (1819-1886)

Polyphemus discovered asleep signed, inscribed and dated 'Sketch of/Polyphemus/discovered asleep by the shepherds of/Sicily/Richard Dadd./1852' (lower right, on a rock) pencil and watercolour 101/4 x 14 1/8 in. (26 x 35.8 cm.) PROVENANCE N.G. Ley; Sotheby's, London, 19 November 1970, lot 193, when acquired by the present owner. LITERATURE D. Greysmith, Richard Dadd: The Rock and Castle of Seclusion, London, 1973, pp. 79, 173, pl. 44. P. Allderidge, Richard Dadd, London, 1974, no. 45, pp. 53, 102-103, illus. EXHIBITION Victorian Art, 1972, no. 68. London, Tate Gallery, Hull, Ferens Art Gallery, Wolverton, Municipal Art Gallery and Bristol, City Art Gallery, The Late Richard Dadd, 1974-75, no. 107, illus. Princeton Alumni Collections: Works on Paper, 1981. NOTES This watercolour was painted while Richard Dadd was in Bethlem Hospital. Dadd has chosen not to depict the conventional images of the Cyclops, Polyphemus, as a savage monster, being blinded by Odysseus while in a drug-induced sleep or madly pursuing the ships of Odysseus as he escaped. Instead he shows a rather bucolic scene wherein Polyphemus, an old man, having fallen asleep is discovered by Sicilian shepherds, who gaze with wonder at the giant they have stumbled across. Polyphemus appears in Sicilian legend and in the Idylls of Theocritus as a jovial figure and an unsuccessful rival to the shepherd Acis for the love of the nymph Galatea. In the same year as he painted this pastoral scene Dadd also executed the violent Dymphna Martyr and Death of Richard II at Pomfret Castle. Patricia Allderidge notes ( op. cit. ) that perhaps through the lack of available models Dadd has reused a number of compositional motifs and poses which appear in other works. Here Polyphemus' right hand encircles the rock with the same gesture as the dying servant clutching the air in Richard II of the same year and it also appears in The Child's Problem and Splendour and Wealth. The shepherd with outspread arms appears again in The Flight of Medea with Jason and in Arab Ambush, while the hunting horn reappears in Robin Hood (1855). The technique employed is typical of Dadd's works of the 1850s before he replaced the broad washes of colour with the pointillist technique of the 1860s. The delicate tonality of pale blue, pink and yellow anticipates his later work in is medium. Born in Chatham in 1817, Dadd enjoyed a brilliant early career, winning three silver medals at the Royal Academy Schools 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. In any event, 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 murder 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.