Richard Dadd painting to return to Bethlem Hospital after 170 years

Some have suggested the red fez hat in Portrait of a Young Man may be the one worn by Richard Dadd in the Middle East before he became unwell

A portrait created over 170 years ago by Richard Dadd while he was at Bethlem Hospital is to be returned to the London institution for the first time.

Portrait of a Young Man was painted by the celebrated Victorian artist during the 20 years he spent at the hospital when it was based in Lambeth.

Dadd was detained at Bethlem after killing his father with a knife.

His painting, loaned by the Tate, will go on display at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind in February.

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Born in 1817, Dadd was considered one of the great talents of his generation during his early artistic life, having been a student at the Royal Academy.

However, towards the end of a tour of the Middle East in the 1840s his mental health declined and he grew angry and suspicious of people.

Shortly after returning home he killed his father, believing he had been possessed by the devil. He was then arrested while in France and detained at Bethlem as a "criminal lunatic".

While there, and also at Broadmoor Hospital where he died in 1886, Dadd continued to paint, creating among other works 1853's Portrait of a Young Man.

Photographs like this of Dadd were often used by Victorian asylum doctors as it was believed that the visual study of patients would help the understanding of mental illness

The sitter in the artwork is unknown but many believe it to be Dr William Charles Hood, the physician-superintendent at Bethlem who became Dadd's patron and encouraged him to continue his work.

It will feature at an exhibition called The Faces We Present at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind, based at the Bethlem Royal Hospital's current site in Beckenham.

Other items going on display will be a photographic portrait from 1857 of Dadd taken at Bethlem, as well as other commissioned portraits of clinicians and works by mental health service users, which are part of the hospital's art collection.

The museum's director, Colin Gale, said he was "thrilled" Dadd's "important painting with such strong connections to the work and history of Bethlem" would be part of the exhibition.

Bethlem Hospital

The world's oldest psychiatric institution

The museum is based within the original 1930s administration building of Bethlem Royal Hospital

• Founded near Bishopsgate in central London in 1247 as a priory of the Church of St Mary of Bethlehem to serve knights setting off for the Crusades

• Referred to as a hospital by 1329; there is evidence of Bethlem being used to house the mentally ill from 1403

• Moved in the second half of the 17th Century to nearby Moorfields, where until 1770 sightseers were able to gaze at patients in the institution's two galleries

• Relocated south of the River Thames in 1815 to a building that now houses the Imperial War Museum, before being moved to its current site in Beckenham in 1930

• Bethlem Royal Hospital continues to provide care as part of the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust

The Faces We Present will run from 22 February to 17 June

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