Sketch to Illustrate the Passions. Senility or Peevishness. Artist: Richard Dadd (British, Chatham, Kent 1817-1886 Berkshire). Dimensions: sheet: 14 1/8 x 10 3/16 in. (35.9 x 25.8 cm). Date: 1855.Between 1853 and 1855 Dadd painted "Sketches to Illustrate the Passions," a series of about thirty watercolors. The earliest use characters from Shakespeare to portray strong emotions, such as Jealousy and Hatred, and these were followed by genre-like images such as "Senility and Peevishness." We are shown two workmen buying and eating pasties outside a tavern watched by a brazier-keeper and barman. The inscribed title specifies the subject, and lettered signs advertize a range of alcohol on offer, but how the imagery illustrates the named passions remains mysterious. After demonstrating early artistic promise, and travelling to Greece and the Near East as draftsman to Sir Thomas Phillips in 1842, Dadd succumbed to paranoid schizophrenia and murdered his father. Confined to psychiatric institu