Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1977.14.46
Gallery Label:
Along with Augustus Egg (whose work is shown nearby), Richard Dadd began his career as a member of “The Clique,” a short-lived group of like-minded artists who stood in opposition to the Royal Academy. But in 1843, Dadd brutally murdered his father and was deemed criminally insane. Confined in mental institutions for the rest of his life, he continued painting and produced some of his finest works while incarcerated. Fish Market by the Sea, one of his largest paintings, was made while he was an inmate of Bethlem Hospital in London and represents a fishing village near Edinburgh. Dadd may never have visited Newhaven and instead based the women in the foreground on early calotype photographs by the Scottish photographers David Octavius Hill (1802–1870) and Robert Adamson (1821–1848). Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016
