Richard Dadd - Legacy

Legacy

The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke inspired a song of the same name by the British rock band Queen. The painting also is a plot element in The Witches of Chiswick by Robert Rankin. The Wee Free Men, a novel by Terry Pratchett, edited in 2003, was in a central part inspired by it as well.

The British fantasy writer Angela Carter wrote Come unto these Yellow Sands, a radio-play based on Dadd's life.

The full name of the eccentric character Mr. Dick in David Copperfield by Charles Dickens is Richard Babley, which echoes the name of Dickens' contemporary Richard Dadd. Canadian author R.J. Anderson acknowledges Dadd as the basis of her fictional painter Alfred Wrenfield, who figures prominently in her young adult fantasy novel Knife (Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter in the USA).

In 1987 a long-lost watercolour by Dadd, The Artist's Halt in the Desert, was discovered by Peter Nahum on the BBC TV programme Antiques Roadshow. Made while the artist was incarcerated, it is based on sketches made during his tour of the Middle East, and shows his party encamped by the Dead Sea, with Dadd at the far right. It was later sold for £100,000 to the British Museum.