Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon, Historical Painter
From his Autobiography and Journals

A three-volume life of the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786–1846), edited by Tom Taylor and published in 1853.

Benjamin Robert Haydon (Author), Tom Taylor (Edited by)

9781108073790, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 22 May 2014

444 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.5 cm, 0.56 kg

Before the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786–1846) committed suicide, he had left instructions that an account of his life should be published, using his autobiography up to 1820 and his letters and journals for the rest. The writer and dramatist Tom Taylor (1817–80) took on the editing, and the three-volume work was published in 1853. (The slightly enlarged second edition, also of 1853, is reissued here.) Haydon was a history painter at a time when that genre was perceived as the greatest form of the art, and his friends included Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Charles Lamb, Hazlitt and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. However, he was constantly in financial difficulties, and in later life a sense of failure seems to have turned into outright paranoia. Volume 1 reproduces Haydon's autobiographical writings up to 1820. His Conversations and Table-Talk, edited in two volumes by his son, is also reissued in this series.

Editor's preface to the second edition
Editor's preface to the first edition
Introduction
Part I: 1. Birth and parentage
2. I go to London
3. My fellow students
4. Visit from Sir G. Beaumont
5. I practise portrait-painting
Part II: 6. My difficulties with Dentatus
7. Dinners at the Admiralty
8. Trip to Devon with Wilkie
9. Commission from Sir G. Beaumont
10. Prince Hoare's opinion of my conduct
11. My pecuniary difficulties
12. My intimates in 1813
Part III: 13. My triumph
14. The freedom of Plymouth voted me
15. From my journals of 1815
16. Letter from Wordsworth
17. I fall in love
18. A commission from Russia.

Subject Areas: The arts: general issues [AB]