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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Richard Dadd
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(1817–1886) English painter best known for a few fantastically detailed fairy paintings which he produced when confined in lunatic asylums for the last forty-two years of his life. Instability and a tendency to violence first became evident during a tour of Europe and the Middle East in 1842-3 with his patron Sir Thomas Phillips.Dadd came to believe that he was under the power of the Egyptian god Osiris. In August 1843 he stabbed and killed his father, mistaking him for the devil. Certified criminally insane, he was confined to *Bedlam. In 1864 he was transferred to the newly built prison for the insane at *Broadmoor.
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In his confinement he developed a minutely detailed style of watercolour painting. The same obsessive attention to detail is put to the service of fantasy in his best-known painting, the large oil entitled The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke (1855-64, Tate Britain).
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