Richard Dadd is one of the most celebrated of Victorian artists, despite having spent most of his career in asylums - first Bethlem Hospital in London and then Broadmoor. A masterly painter of fairyland before he became ill during a tour of the Eastern Mediterranean, Dadd continued making painstakingly detailed images of the places he had visited on his tour in addition to a huge range of subjects from history, literature and from his own imagination.

Dadd is the subject of a major exhibition (Beyond Bedlam, 25 July - 25 October 2026) at the Royal Academy in London. The curator of the exhibition, Nicholas Tromans, is an expert on Dadd’s work and in this talk he will be sharing the latest research on the artist and giving insights into the process of assembling the exhibition, the most ambitious display of Dadd’s work for over fifty years.

Titania Sleeping, 1841, Louvre