Artist, diarist, and devotee of the Elgin Marbles, Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786 1846) is best known for his large-scale paintings, such as Christ's Entry into Jerusalem and The Raising of Lazarus. After he entered the Royal Academy in 1805 as a student of Henry Fuseli, his forthright views and combative manner fuelled a feud with the institution and perceived enemies. His unshakeable belief in his own genius and his unwillingness to compromise his artistic standards drew him ever further into debt, which ultimately contributed to his suicide. As a writer, Haydon's acute eye for the humorous...

Artist, diarist, and devotee of the Elgin Marbles, Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786 1846) is best known for his large-scale paintings, such as Christ's Entry into Jerusalem and The Raising of Lazarus. After he entered the Royal Academy in 1805 as a student of Henry Fuseli, his forthright views and combative manner fuelled a feud with the institution and perceived enemies. His unshakeable belief in his own genius and his unwillingness to compromise his artistic standards drew him ever further into debt, which ultimately contributed to his suicide. As a writer, Haydon's acute eye for the humorous...

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...

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...

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...