The Cat’s-Paw

The painter Richard Dadd (1817-1886) is chiefly remembered for the two extraordinarily-detailed masterpieces he painted during his incarceration in Bethlem Hospital: Contradiction. Oberon and Titania (1854-8), and The Fairy-Feller’s Master Stroke (ca. 1855-64). Besides these justly-celebrated works, he also produced dozens of watercolours, and a smaller number of singularly-fascinating oil-paintings, during his long confinement in ‘Bedlam’, and, later, in Broadmoor.