Richard Dadd

This powerful watercolour forms part of Dadd’s series of Sketches to Illustrate the Passions, a body of work – of which thirty examples survive - that he begun in 1853 and that he painted in Bethlehem Hospital.

Dadd had been incarcerated in the hospital in 1843 following his catastrophic mental breakdown which resulted in him murdering his own father. His descent into insanity was even more tragic as, since his enrollment in the Royal Academy schools in 1837, he had been building up a reputation as one of the major talents of his generation. He was to spend the rest of his life in institutions where only painting provided any kind of relief. 

In the present work Dadd depicts a lone pilgrim who gazes out to sea from a lonely beach. He leans against a grey boulder, his body almost melting into the stone. Behind him, steep cliffs raise up menacingly; at their summit stands a ruined castle.

The sense of tension and melancholy is palpable in this watercolour, an effect entirely created by Dadd’s superb use of line and sense of colour.