Sketch to Illustrate the Passions–Ambition

This work comes from Dadd's "Sketches to Illustrate the Passions," a series made between 1853 and 1857 while confined in Bethlehem Hospital. Elements in "Ambition" recall the artist's trip to Greece and the Holy Land a decade before and the young man at center may evoke Dadd's younger self. The older man weighing down the younger down may represent either his father (whom the unhinged Dadd murdered shortly after returning to England in 1843), or Sir Thomas Phillips, the demanding patron who took Dadd to the Middle East. Figures in the middle ground, who draw water from a gushing pipe, resemble those in a sketchbook of 1842-43 (Victoria and Albert Museum). The latter also contains a drawing of a similar water labeled "style of fountains in Greece." Quotes inscribed at the bottom of this sheet connect the title to two of Shakespeare plays ("vaulting ambition" comes from Macbeth, Act I, scene vii and "mocking the meat it feeds on" is found in Othello, Act III, scene iii).