Richard Dadd was born in Chatham in Kent, the son of a chemist. He began drawing seriously when he was about thirteen. In 1837, after his family had moved to London, he entered the Royal Academy Schools, where he was considered to be one of the most promising young artists of his generation. He first exhibited his work in 1838, and soon began to make a reputation with delicate and imaginative scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and other fairy subjects. Dadd was experimenting with various engraving techniques at around the time when this self portrait was made. Several other etchings by him survive, and in 1842, along with contemporaries such as William Powell Frith, Augustus Egg, Edward Ward, and William Bell Scott, he became a founder member of the Painters Etching Society. He also designed wood engravings for S.C. Hall’s Book of British Ballads, drawing directly on the wood. This etching was made from a watercolour which also survives. The watercolour has a note on the back that it shows the artist at the age of 23. The original image has been reversed in the etching process, but since (being a self portrait) it would already have been a mirror image, it probably does show Dadd more or less as he appeared to others at this time – and with his hair parted on the correct side.