Thursday, July 6, 2017

English Paintings (early 19th century)

Benjamin Robert Haydon
Venus and Anchises
1826
oil on canvas
Yale Center for British Art

Benjamin Robert Haydon
Christ Blessing the Little Children
1837
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

"Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846). Born in the West Country, he came to London to study at the Royal Academy in 1804.  He produced huge paintings on epic themes but constantly struggled against poor eyesight and poverty (he was thrice imprisoned for debt).  He was among the first to appreciate the beauty and importance of the Elgin Marbles and campaigned for the nation to buy them.  He met Keats at Leigh Hunt's during October 1816, took him up, encouraged him, and included his portrait in his painting Christ's Entry into Jerusalem.  Their enthusiastic friendship cooled when Haydon failed to repay a loan that Keats had ill been able to afford.  It was Haydon who originated the myth that Keats sprinkled his throat with cayenne the better to enjoy the coolness of claret."

 from the Oxford Authors edition of John Keats, edited by Elizabeth Cook (Oxford University Press, 1990), see Index of Keats's Correspondents and others to whom he frequently refers

ADDRESSED TO [HAYDON]

Great spirits now on earth are sojourning;
   He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,
   Who on Helvellyn's summit, wide awake,
Catches his freshness from Archangel's wing:
He of the rose, the violet, the spring,
   The social smile, the chain for Freedom's sake:
   And lo!  whose steadfastness would never take
A meaner sound than Raphael's whispering.
And other spirits there are standing apart
   Upon the forehead of the age to come;
These, these will give the world another heart,
   And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum
Of mighty workings? 
   Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb.

 composed by Keats 19 or 20 November 1816 and enclosed in a letter of 20 November to Haydon as apropos the previous evening ('Last Evening wrought me up and I cannot forbear sending you the following').  Haydon promised to send a copy to Wordsworth (Keats wrote that 'the idea . . . put me out of breath') who thought it 'assuredly vigorously conceived and well expressed'.  The poem is intended as praise for Wordsworth, for Leigh Hunt, and for Haydon himself.

Pieter Christoffel Wonder
Staircase of the London residence of the painter
1828
oil on canvas
Centraal Museum, Utrecht

Thomas Lawrence
Portrait of Miss Harriet Clements
ca. 1805
oil on canvas
Indianapolis Museum of Art

Thomas Lawrence
Portrait of Lord Granville Leveson-Gower
ca. 1804-09
oil on canvas
Yale Center for British Art

John Constable
Celebration in East Bergholt of the Peace of 1814
painted ca. 1824
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

John Constable
Extensive landscape with grey clouds
ca. 1821
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Yale Center for British Art

John Constable
Parham Mill, Gillingham
ca. 1826
oil on canvas
Yale Center for British Art

Samuel Palmer
Cypresses at Villa d'Este, Tivoli
1838
watercolor, gouache
Yale Center for British Art

Richard Parkes Bonington
In the Forest of Fontainebleau
ca. 1825
oil on panel
Yale Center for British Art

Richard Parkes Bonington
Knight and Page
ca. 1826
oil on canvas
Yale Center for British Art

Richard Parkes Bonington
Grand Canal at low tide looking toward the Rialto
1826
oil on panel
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth

Richard Parkes Bonington
Beached vessels and wagon near Trouville
ca. 1825
oil on canvas
Yale Center for British Art

John Constable
Cloud study
1821
oil on paper, mounted on panel
Yale Center for British Art