Biography for Benjamin Robert Haydon

Employment

Haydon attempted to make a successful career as classical and historical painter scale, working usually on an enormous scale. He came to London in 1804, and studied at the Royal Academy Schools and, from 1806, began work on a long series of grandiloquent works which at first attracted some public admiration, not least from the Romantic poets, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and John Keats (1795-1821). He found himself constantly in debt and, partly because of his argumentative nature, fell from favour as a painter, though he became better known for his writings especially in his revealing and gossipy diaries.
He was among the first to recognise the significance of the Parthenon Marbles , arguing vigorously for their acquisition, and they were eventually purchased for the nation from Lord Elgin in 1816. They remain, somewhat controversially in the British Museum, which also houses a collection of 264 large chalk drawings which Haydon made from the Marbles between 1808 and 1811, when they were in Elgin's house in London.
In 1846, broken by repeated disappointments and lack of public recognition, Haydon committed suicide.