'Pruning a genius': marginalia by Richard Dadd. Issue 2 (June 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Tromans, Nicholas
• Is Part Of: History of psychiatry. Volume 32:Issue 2(2021)
• Page Start: 127
• Page End: 145
• Publication Date: 2021-06
• Subjects: Art -- asylums -- Bethlem Hospital -- marginalia -- patients' writings -- Romanticism -- slavery; Psychiatry -- History -- Periodicals; Mental illness -- History -- Periodicals; 616.89009
• DOI: 10.1177/0957154X20978342
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0957-154X

Abstract

After falling into mental illness as a young man, the British artist Richard Dadd (1817–86) spent some 20 years as a patient at Bethlem Hospital in London. A rare example of his writings from these years survives in the form of marginalia in a copy of Lectures on Painting and Design by Benjamin Robert Haydon, held in the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. This article presents a transcription of the notes, along with an introduction setting them in the contexts of Dadd's career and his relationship with the senior staff at Bethlem.