Page 56 - Studio International - November 1973

and a chronology of works, it is not. There is a At Dadd's expense back. Again, he scorns an 'often repeated story
preface to the book by C. Day Lewis, entitled Richard Dadd: The Rock and Castle of Seclusion that he won three gold medals' because 'he was
`Paul Nash; A Private View', which does by David Greysmith. 190 pp, 108 plates. Studio in fact awarded two silver medals' (p. 13): but
nothing but add to the unfortunate impression, Vista. £6.80. the records of the Royal Academy and other
given by Miss Eates's text, that the letterpress sources show clearly that he won three medals,
section was framed as a social celebration. In the early 184os Richard Dadd was at the and so far as I know, no one has ever suggested
Dr Baron's monograph on Sickert is an centre of a group of young painters including that they were gold. Setting up targets just to
altogether more scholarly affair. Her prose is as Augustus Egg, John 'Spanish' Phillip, and that knock them down is always a dubious pastime:
tersely expressive of her sure grasp upon the embryonic Arch Victorian, William Powell - here it is too often attempted with a boomerang.
facts as Miss Eates's is expressive of her grasp of Frith. Gifted, attractive and dedicated, his Though these are only samples from a wide
metaphysics. The book is designed to inform brilliant fairy paintings just beginning to be range of careless talk, they might be relatively
about Sickert's 'stylistic and technical acclaimed, with one commission already unimportant if confined to small matters of
development' in the context of a selective behind him and a Middle East tour to stock his detail: but much of the assessment of Dadd's
catalogue of works in which documentary mind and sketchbook for years to come, he work seems to be based on comparably
evidence has been given firm precedence over faced an assured future when, suddenly and unreliable methods and inadequate research.
dating by means of stylistic analysis. The inexplicably, his life was shattered by insanity. Mr Greysmith puts forward the view that
emphasis is upon work up until 1914. There is After killing 'an individual who called himself Dadd's originality was somehow 'released' by
no straying beyond the voluntarily established his father', Dadd was shut up for 42 years in the his insanity, basing this argument on the
limits into the greener pastures of 'life and criminal lunatic asylums of Bethlem and then proposition that before his illness his work was
times'. Not a whisper of a zeitgeist. There is no Broadmoor, never again completely free of his unoriginal and dull in a typical mid-nineteenth-
deliberate filling in of the background, even of so delusions, but never losing his intellectual century manner. To support this theory, he
rich a subject as Sickert's involvement with the capacity or ceasing to practise his profession. considers all Dadd's work up to 1841 in a
Camden Town Group. Yet much of the detail In complete isolation, he spent the rest of his section beginning with the statement that 'At
is there, to be pieced together by the interested life exploring the farthest reaches where first Dadd's work was conventional enough,
reader from the impeccable documentation, the visionary imagination could take him, producing even dull', and ending with the rhetorical
occasional quotation of a previously unpublished refinements of style which sometimes seem to question 'but does he not lack, in the works we
source, the copious footnotes. To learn that push his media beyond the limits of have examined so far, any visionary spark or
Fred Brown, from whom Sickert had good possibility. inner eye ?' (pp 75-76). The unwary reader
reason to expect the kind of treatment accorded For many years his work has attracted a small might not notice that of the eleven works
to a friend and colleague, wrote to say that 'the but increasing following, all waiting for a book examined eight do not exist - or rather, exist
sordid nature of his pictures since the Camden to give some context to whichever of his only as titles in nineteenth-century catalogues -
Town Murder series made it impossible for scattered and elusive works they may have and two are very small landscapes from his
there to be any friendship between them' (p. happened to encounter. Occasional articles have first student year of which at least one is known
1o9), is to learn something about the whole appeared, but Mr Greysmith's is the first only from a black and white photograph. The
enterprise of Camden Town painting, about the attempt at a full-scale account of his life and last, Titania Sleeping, is dismissed as showing
concepts of realism relevant during the first work. At a purely biographical level, it provides some skill in design but being otherwise
decade of this century, about the social status a useful compendium of previously hard-to- unremarkable, from which it must be concluded
of painting and painters, and so on. This is a come-by information, and although there are that Mr Greysmith has not seen this truly
book to use. important sources which the author obviously remarkable painting either, except in the rather
The catalogue of selected works (451 fully does not know about, gives an overall outline dreary photograph printed in the book. Among
described, of which 302 are illustrated) is of Dadd's life which most readers will find the works which have survived but are not
detailed and, so far as the non-specialist can sufficient. It is not a book to be quoted from, examined are a sensitive and mature portrait of
tell (and non-specialist in face of a study like however, without checking the material at its his sister, painted when he was only fifteen, and
this is probably a class from which only Dr source, for the standard of accuracy is low a series of captivating little watercolour portraits
Baron is excluded), methodologically throughout. To take examples from each end, from around 1838, none of them dull, and
impeccable. The one real disappointment is the on p. 11 the age of Dadd's mother and the date another very remarkable and important fairy
poor quality of the plates; they are not really of her death are wrong by one and two years painting Come Unto these Yellow Sands (this
adequate to 'enable anyone to date uncatalogued respectively and those of his stepmother by at is later allowed to be a 'slight exception', without
Sickert's by comparison' as the jacket blurb least five, and five years; while in 'Appendix A' further comment). It is not surprising that Mr
suggests, nor are they likely to afford much the 'transcription' of two family gravestones has Greysmith does not comment at all on the most
pleasure to the armchair enthusiast (except in over twenty errors and omissions and contains scintillating and disturbing of all this group,
the case of those few plates illustrating bold elements of fantasy worthy of Dadd himself. Puck and the Fairies, if he believes it to be the
drawings). Reading between the lines of Dr This being so, it is a pity that Mr Greysmith work shown at plate 24, this being a dismal
Baron's acknowledgments I conclude that she should sometimes try to improve his own copy of a weak and incomplete engraving of the
took the majority of the photographs herself, credibility at the expense of others, for the tone real thing; but it is a little surprising that
presumably under the best conditions and with of authority with which he makes 'corrections' anyone claiming an acquaintance with Dadd's
the best art she could achieve, supported in her is not always justified. Typical of this is his note work should accept this travesty as being from
travels by the Mellon Foundation. At this very on the British Museum drawing Port Stragglin his hand. (The late John Rickett, to whose
high price, for a book which is very largely the (p. 179), where he contradicts two previous collection it is wrongly attributed, certainly did
product of researches and of travels supported authorities who commented on the strange not; though he did own Puck and the Fairies.)
by others than the publishers, it is disappointing remarks which Dadd has written on the back: But to ignore all the surviving work is not only
to find that the accuracy of so many of the `I can only suppose that they both refer to the to misrepresent Dadd's early achievement and
illustrations is vitiated by unevennesses of inscription given, which is on the front, very real originality, but to miss an important
lighting, reflections from the picture surface and because there is nothing on the back of the work'. element in his later development : for many of
often serious cropping of the images. Where This is quite simply not true, as both the the characteristics which were later to seem so
does all the money go ? 0 inscription and the 'jocular remarks' noted by peculiarly the product of his insane period are
CHARLES HARRISON Campbell Dodgson are plainly there on the already to be found in these early paintings.

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