Augustus Egg

Richard Dadd, between 1838 and 1840

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Artist: Richard Dadd (British, 1817–1886)
Medium: Oil on panel
Size: 25 1/4 x 19 1/2 inches (64.1 x 49.5 cm)
Museum: Yale Center for British Art
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

At the time this portrait was painted, Richard Dadd and Augustus Egg were members of “The Clique,” a short-lived group of like-minded artists who stood in opposition to the Royal Academy. The painter William Bell Scott, who also was associated with the group, was most likely describing the present painting when he later recalled seeing a portrait of Egg “in a tall conical brown hat, like a Puritan, his complexion being almost colorless” in Dadd’s studio around 1841.

By 1843, when Dadd murdered his father, the group had already disbanded. Shortly after Dadd’s arrest, police broke into his studio where they found on a wall behind a screen more portraits by the artist of Egg and others from the Clique, all with their throats cut. Dadd was deemed criminally insane and was confined in mental hospitals for the remainder of his life, during which time he produced some of his most famous works.

Text: Yale Center for British Art.