The Victorian tradition of genre subjects thrived into the twentieth century through the work of such artists as Frank Dadd. Both highly prolific and historically accurate, Dadd produced a wide range of narrative imagery, from the eighteenth century to the First World War, and became virtually synonymous with boys’ adventure stories.
Frank Dadd was born at 54 Whitechapel High Street, London, on 28 March 1851, the third of six children of Robert Dadd, a chemist. Robert was the brother of the artist, Richard Dadd, and had to take responsibility for the entire Dadd family when Richard murdered their father, in 1843, and was confined to an asylum.
Educated privately, Frank Dadd spent much of his spare time in the Thames-side dockyard of his grandfather, the shipbuilder, Thomas Carter. The knowledge that he acquired there influenced his later paintings of coastal and river scenes.
Dadd studied art at the South Kensington Schools and, from 1871, at the Royal Academy Schools. Learning most about drawing from a visiting teacher, Lord Leighton, he won a silver medal for Drawing from Life and began to sell his drawings while still a student.
He gained some of his earliest commissions from publishers with the help of the engraver, John Greenaway, a distant cousin and father of Kate Greenaway, the illustrator. His brother, Edward Martin Dadd, would marry Kate’s sister, Fanny.
By 1872, Dadd was living at 4 Campshill Terrace, Ryecroft Road, Lewisham, and establishing himself as a genre painter and narrative illustrator. During the early 1870s, he exhibited at the Society of British Artists and contributed to periodicals, notably The Cornhill Magazine. Later in the decade, he began to work regularly for The Graphic (from 1876) and The Illustrated London News (from 1878), joining the staff of the former in 1884. He received regular commissions for book illustrations from the late 1870s, many from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
While Dadd developed a speciality in monochrome illustrations to boys’ adventure stories, he was also a skilful colourist, as is best seen in his contributions to Holly Leaves and Pears’ Annual, and Christmas numbers of The Graphic, as well as his paintings for exhibition. Becoming a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours in 1884, and a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Oils four years later, he also showed work at the Royal Academy of Arts, at leading provincial galleries and internationally.
From 1903, Dadd and his family lived at Morwenstow, Springfield Road, Wallington, Surrey. Though he left the staff of The Graphic in 1910, he continued to produce illustrations through the following decade. In 1919, he retired to West Lawn, Higher Brimley, Teignmouth, dying there on 7 March 1929. His wife, two sons and a daughter survived him.
