4. Richard Dadd – Mental Illness And Patricide
The young Victorian artist was tragically struck by mental illness while touring Europe. Dadd underwent a dramatic personality change, becoming delusional, increasingly violent, and believing himself to be under the influence of the Egyptian god Osiris. His condition was initially thought to be sunstroke. On the artist’s return in the spring of 1843, he was diagnosed to be of unsound mind, and was taken by his family to recuperate in the countryside village of Cobham, Kent. In August of that year, having become convinced that his father was the Devil in disguise, Dadd killed him with a knife and fled to France. En route to Paris, the artist attempted to kill another tourist with a razor but was overpowered and was arrested by police. Dadd spent the rest of his life in prisons and mental institutions, where he painted fantastic fairy scenes of bizarre intensity. The artist died in Broadmoor.