A FASCINATING exhibition of work by a Victorian painter who spent more than 40 years in an asylum has opened.

The show traces the work of Richard Dadd (1817 to 1886) from before the onset of his mental illness, which led him to murder his father, to work completed during his confinement.

The exhibition, which is on loan from the Bethlehem Art and History Collections Trust, opens at the Durham Light Infantry Museum and Durham Art Gallery today.

Dadd was the fourth of 11 children and began his artistic training when he was 13.

By the time he was 20, he had built a reputation for his imaginative scenes from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and other fantasy subjects, and was admitted to the Royal Academy.

In 1842, he left England for a tour of Europe and the Middle East with his patron, Sir Thomas Phillips, during which he suffered increasing mental disturbance and violent tendencies.

He believed he was persecuted by devils and that he received messages from the Egyptian god Osiris.

In 1843, he stabbed his father to death, believing him to be the devil in disguise.

He fled to France, intending to commit more murders, but was arrested after trying to cut the throat of a stranger with whom he was travelling in a coach.

When he was 26, he was committed to the criminal department of Bethlehem psychiatric hospital and later Broadmoor.

Dadd remained incarcerated for 43 years, during which time he was encouraged to paint and created many of his masterpieces, including his most celebrated The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke.

He also produced more than 30 watercolours illustrating the passions, as well as shipping scenes and landscapes.

The exhibition is at the musuem until Sunday, October 14.

It runs alongside Journeys, which features work by young people from ten schools across County Durham.