Old Masters & 19th Century European Art

The work is accompanied by a fragment of a letter in an unidentified 19th century hand, referring to Dadd, 2 pages, 8vo (worn).

Provenance:

Dr. Thomas Aitken, MD

Gladys Aitken, by descent from the above

Elizabeth Dunlop, given by the above

Charles Croggan, given by the above

Mrs. A.J. Croggan, by descent from the above

Sold: Christie's, London, June 13, 2001, Lot 8

From the Collection of Justin G. Schiller

Exhibited:

London, Peter Nahum at the Leicester Galleries, Committed Art. A Loan Exhibition of works by Richard Dadd, Vaslav Nijinski and other artists from the collection of the Bethlem Royal Hospital Museum, July 2001 - January 2002, unnumbered

Lot Essay:

The Rabbit Hutch is a recollection of Richard Dadd's childhood in Chatham, England, and most likely relates to an actual event. The characters represented may be his younger 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 watercolor: "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" (P. Allderidge, Richard Dadd, London, 1974, p. 91, no. 97).

Born in Chatham in 1817, Dadd enjoyed a brilliant early career, winning three silver medals at the Royal Academy school and achieving distinction among his artistic contemporaries. The artist began to exhibit in 1837, first at Suffolk Street, then at the Royal Academy and the British Institution. Dadd’s works at this time revealed a strong inclination towards imaginative painting, with a concentration on fairy subjects and he gained 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. Dadd was recommended by the artist David Roberts and he was expected not only to be a traveling companion but to also record the architectural sights. The visual excitement and physical hardship of the ten-month Middle Eastern tour sadly precipitated a mental crisis in the young artist. Dadd returned insane, and in August 1843 murdered his father, 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. Dadd was extradited to England, where he appeared before magistrates at Rochester. His behavior left no doubt of his disturbed state of mind, and on August 22, 1844, he was committed to Bethlem Hospital. The artist remained in Bethlem for twenty years, moving in 1864 to the newly built Broadmoor in Berkshire.

Unknown until its appearance at auction in 2001, The Rabbit Hutch had never been recorded in Dadd literature and had not been seen outside the family collection. The watercolor is thought to have been given to a doctor of mental health, Dr. Thomas Aitken, MD, a physician and superintendent at the District Lunatic Asylum in Inverness. It is not known how or when he met Dadd, but the existence of a manuscript letter that has always been with the watercolor 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 watercolors 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 watercolors (mentioned in the letter) must have been at Morison's house. He was very interested in Dadd and had several 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 a 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...

In his watercolors, Dadd repeats compositional motifs. Most notable in the Rabbit Hutch is the large washing line and the wooden fence, seen previously 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 emphasized by their hard staring eyes, a hallmark of Dadd's work; it also relates to the boy in The Child's Problem (Tate, London) who has an unsettled, unfocused stare. In terms of technique, The Rabbit Hutch stands out clearly as a work of the 1860s. 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 is one of him painting his well-known composition Contradition: Oberon and Titania, which shows him painstakingly completing the picture. In the photograph he is working in oil, but the same meticulous and almost laborious obsession was applied to his work in watercolor, as seen in the present work.