Property from the Estate of the late Alys Rickett
Richard Dadd
A dream of fancy
Lot Closed
July 6, 02:42 PM GMT
Estimate
3,000 - 5,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Property from the Estate of the late Alys Rickett
Richard Dadd
Chatham, Kent 1817 - 1886 Broadmoor Hospital, Berkshire
A dream of fancy
Watercolour;
signed and inscribed lower centre: A Dream of Fancy. R' Dadd. Bethlehem Hospital 1859.
99 by 146 mm
given by Haydon to Myles Birket Foster (1825-1899);
sale, London, Sotheby’s, 2 November 1966, lot 198,
where acquired by Ronald John Rickett (d. 1970),
by family descent to the present owners
London, Arts Council of Great Britain, The Late Richard Dadd, 1974-1975, no. 174;
London, Andrew Clayton-Payne, Richard Dadd (1817-1886), Dreams of Fancy. A Loan Exhibition, 2008
This delicate landscape, painted on an intensely miniature scale, was made in 1859, sixteen years after Dadd’s incarceration in Bethlehem Hospital following his murder of his own father and his complete mental breakdown.
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.
Entitled 'a dream of fancy', the work forms part of a group of drawings that recall his travels in 1842-1843 through Switzerland, north Italy, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. Painted in a fine stippled technique, the work takes on a visionary quality.
The present work has descended in the family of Ronald John Rickett, known as John, who was a director of British Pictures at Sotheby’s in the 1960s.
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