Benjamin Haydon
Benjamin Robert Haydon was born on 26 January 1786 in Plymouth. He was a citizen of the Kingdom of Great Britain and later of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and he worked in the English language throughout his life. Plymouth was the city of his birth, and it was from this origin that he developed into a painter who would pursue his craft across his working life.
Haydon received his education at the Royal Academy of Arts. His work belonged to the genre of history painting, and he specialised in grand historical pictures. This specialisation defined the character of his output as a painter, situating him within a mode of practice that placed particular demands on those who pursued it. Working in this genre, Haydon produced pictures that reflected his sustained engagement with historical subjects across the course of his career as a painter using the English language and operating within British artistic life.
Haydon died on 22 June 1846 in London. He had been born sixty years earlier in Plymouth, and his death in London brought to a close the life of a painter who had worked in the genre of history painting and who had been educated at the Royal Academy of Arts. The facts of his birth in Plymouth, his education at that institution, and his death in London together trace the geographic arc of a career devoted to grand historical pictures.
Quotes by Benjamin Haydon
Benjamin Haydon's insights on:
Mistrusts sometimes come over one’s mind of the justice of God. But let a real misery come again, and to whom do we fly? To whom do we instinctively and immediately look up?
All government is an evil, but, of the two form’s of that evil, democracy or monarchy, the sounder is monarchy; the more able to do its will, democracy.
Do your duty, and don’t swerve from it. Do that which your conscience tells you to be right, and leave the consequences to God.
This is an age of intellectual sauces, of essence, of distillation. We have "conclusions" without deductions, "abridgments of history" and "abridgments of science" without leading facts.
All government is an evil, but, of the two form's of that evil, democracy or monarchy, the sounder is monarchy; the more able to do its will, democracy.
The great difficulty is first to win a reputation; the next to keep it while you live; and the next to preserve it after you die, when affection and interest are over, and nothing but sterling excellence can preserve your name. Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.
Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.
Never disregard what your enemies say. They may be severe, they may be prejudiced, they may be determined to see only in one direction, but still in that direction see clearly. They do not speak all the truth, but they generally speak the truth from one point of view; so far as that goes, attend to them.
Mistrusts sometimes come over one's mind of the justice of God. But let a real misery come again, and to whom do we fly? To whom do we instinctively and immediately look up?