Benjamin Robert Haydon

A fascinating and pivotal figure in the history of British Art, Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786 – 1846) devoted his life to the advocacy of history painting in England.

Early in his career, Haydon pursued an independent and thorough study of anatomy at a time when this tradition was largely ignored by many British artists.

Though many consider that his pen proved mightier than his brush, through writing and lectures he was harbinger to the next generation of Victorian Classicists. Haydon’s lifelong championship of the Elgin Marbles as the supreme example of that balance between Nature and Idealism can be felt in the following remark from his journals on “The Raising of Lazarus” by Sebastiano del Piombo, “There is a grandeur and originality in the style of it; evidently built on Nature, but not far enough from it to be classed in the highest, and yet not too near to be ranked with the lowest.”