In memory of Richard Dadd: ten of his best, and thoughts about his life and work. Would we have been any better towards him even now?
painting
The decline and fall of Medea, as her sorcery is used for murder, and she kills her own infant sons. Paintings by Delacroix, Turner, and others.
Friend and biographer of Gustave Moreau, his story and works have now all but vanished. Here are some enigmatic Symbolist paintings.
Classical history paintings are rarer than those of myth. Even fewer show the most anomalous of classical societies: the Spartans.
In 1864, he was transferred to the newly-built Broadmoor Asylum. Despite that disruption, he continued to paint.
Domenicus van Wijnen’s paintings are radically original, quite unlike other works before him, and not matched for more than a century after. Why don’t we know him and these paintings better?
Painters of the early northern Renaissance founded modern Western landscape painting, and developed the first examples of staffage.
An unusual story of sorcery used to restore youth has seldom been painted – even after Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein became popular.
In which Dadd becomes a nineteenth-century Bosch on some seriously psychotropic drugs. It is a masterpiece like no other.
Among his last paintings are six superb landscapes, painted for his pleasure. What a wonderful end to such an illustrious career.
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