"The Victorian artist Richard Dadd painted exquisite, highly detailed canvases filled with fairies and other magical creatures. In his best-known work, The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke (ca. 1855–64), flowers, leaves, and stalks of grass unfurl across the canvas, giving way to a magical world of miniature figures in fanciful dresses and crowns. They gather around a brown-suited gentleman who’s about to cleave an acorn in two with an ax.
Yet this central act of violence eerily corresponds to Dadd’s earlier misdeeds: In 1843, in a bout of madness, he killed his father, then assaulted a tourist on a train on his escape. He spent the rest of his life in institutions; the asylum became his studio, where he produced most of his imaginative paintings."
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-victorian-artist-painted-fairy-worlds-asylum
Yet this central act of violence eerily corresponds to Dadd’s earlier misdeeds: In 1843, in a bout of madness, he killed his father, then assaulted a tourist on a train on his escape. He spent the rest of his life in institutions; the asylum became his studio, where he produced most of his imaginative paintings."
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-victorian-artist-painted-fairy-worlds-asylum