Lot Essay
As the inscription states, this important Romantic image - a likeness of one great exponent of the movement by another - is a study for Haydon's painting of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem (St Mary's Seminary, Norwood, Ohio). Haydon 'rubbed in' the canvas in 1814, and began it in earnest the following year under the inspiration of the pictures looted by Napoleon in Italy, which he had seen during a recent visit to Paris with Wilkie. He was to work on it for the next five years, living largely on credit, and when it was finally exhibited in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, in 1820, it caused a sensation, 'all the world of fashion' flocking to the private view and Sarah Siddons giving it her majestic seal of approval when asked her opinion by Sir George Beaumont before the hushed assembly. 'The Jerusalem', wrote Haydon with characteristic lack of modesty, 'was considered a national triumph. I had proved that people cared about High Art, and that an Englishman could execute it'. The picture also proved popular when he exhibited it in Edinburgh and Glasgow later that year. No-one, however, bought it, and in 1825 it was sold to his creditors for #240. In 1831 it went to America, much to his dismay. 'It was melancholy', he wrote, 'thus to look, for the last time, at a work which had excited so great a sensation in England and Scotland; the progress of which had been watched by all the nobility, foreign ministers and people of fashion, and on the success of which all prospect for the historical Art of the country at that time appeared to hang. It was now leaving my native country for ever, where I had hoped to have seen it placed triumphantly in some public building'.
At an early stage Haydon decided to include a number of 'real' people among the crowd of onlookers, namely Voltaire and Newton, who appeared respectively as a 'sneerer' and a 'believer', and three of his own friends - Hazlitt, Wordsworth and Keats. Wordsworth appears as the third spectator on the right in the middle distance, 'bowing in reverence and awe'. Haydon had met him about five years earlier, and they were to remain close friends and mutual admirers until Haydon's death in 1846. 'Never did any man so beguile the time as Wordsworth', Haydon wrote in 1815. 'His purity of heart, his kindness, his soundness of principle, his information, his knowledge, and the intense and eager failings with which he pours forth all he knows, affect, interest and enchant me. I do not know anyone I would be so inclined to worship as a purified being'. Wordsworth for his part addressed a number of sonnets to Haydon, extolling his works. Together with Keats, Lamb and others, he was present at the 'immortal dinner' held in Haydon's studio at 22 Lisson Grove on 28 December 1817, 'with Jerusalem towering up behind (them) as a background'; and like Mrs Siddons, he approved of Haydon's interpretation of Christ, which many found disconcerting. According to Haydon's Autobiography, he did not 'resolve to introduce' Wordsworth into the picture until 1817, but the inscription on the present drawing suggests that it was made two years earlier, possibly around 12 April 1815 when Haydon had Wordsworth's life-mask taken, no doubt also in connection with his painting. (A cast is in the National Portrait Gallery, together with one of the like-mask of Keats which Haydon took for the same purpose.) Another study by Haydon of Wordsworth, perhaps made at the same time, was sold at Christie's on 17 November 1981, lot 84. This, however, was smaller, less finished, and, unlike the present drawing, did not correspond in pose with the figure of the poet in the painting.
It is interesting that when, in 1842, Haydon came to paint his well-known portrait of Wordsworth musing on Helvellyn (National Portrait Gallery), he once again used the downward-looking pose adopted in Christ's Entry into Jerusalem and our drawing. Wordsworth thought the portrait, for which he sat on 14-16 June, looking 'venerable', 'the best likeness, that is, the most characteristic, that has been done of me'. (All quotations from Malcolm Elwin (ed.), The Autobiography and Journals of Benjamin robert Haydon, 1950)
At an early stage Haydon decided to include a number of 'real' people among the crowd of onlookers, namely Voltaire and Newton, who appeared respectively as a 'sneerer' and a 'believer', and three of his own friends - Hazlitt, Wordsworth and Keats. Wordsworth appears as the third spectator on the right in the middle distance, 'bowing in reverence and awe'. Haydon had met him about five years earlier, and they were to remain close friends and mutual admirers until Haydon's death in 1846. 'Never did any man so beguile the time as Wordsworth', Haydon wrote in 1815. 'His purity of heart, his kindness, his soundness of principle, his information, his knowledge, and the intense and eager failings with which he pours forth all he knows, affect, interest and enchant me. I do not know anyone I would be so inclined to worship as a purified being'. Wordsworth for his part addressed a number of sonnets to Haydon, extolling his works. Together with Keats, Lamb and others, he was present at the 'immortal dinner' held in Haydon's studio at 22 Lisson Grove on 28 December 1817, 'with Jerusalem towering up behind (them) as a background'; and like Mrs Siddons, he approved of Haydon's interpretation of Christ, which many found disconcerting. According to Haydon's Autobiography, he did not 'resolve to introduce' Wordsworth into the picture until 1817, but the inscription on the present drawing suggests that it was made two years earlier, possibly around 12 April 1815 when Haydon had Wordsworth's life-mask taken, no doubt also in connection with his painting. (A cast is in the National Portrait Gallery, together with one of the like-mask of Keats which Haydon took for the same purpose.) Another study by Haydon of Wordsworth, perhaps made at the same time, was sold at Christie's on 17 November 1981, lot 84. This, however, was smaller, less finished, and, unlike the present drawing, did not correspond in pose with the figure of the poet in the painting.
It is interesting that when, in 1842, Haydon came to paint his well-known portrait of Wordsworth musing on Helvellyn (National Portrait Gallery), he once again used the downward-looking pose adopted in Christ's Entry into Jerusalem and our drawing. Wordsworth thought the portrait, for which he sat on 14-16 June, looking 'venerable', 'the best likeness, that is, the most characteristic, that has been done of me'. (All quotations from Malcolm Elwin (ed.), The Autobiography and Journals of Benjamin robert Haydon, 1950)