Discover the life of Benjamin Haydon, the controversial Plymouth-born painter who specialised in grand historical pictures and met a gruesome death.
Born in Plymouth, Benjamin Haydon (1786–1846) was a painter who specialised in grand historical pictures.
Although Haydon sold works to Kings and Prime Ministers, his commercial success was damaged by his dealings with patrons, acrimonious relations with the art establishment and the enormous scale of his preferred work.
He was friends with Romantic poets John Keats and William Wordsworth, lambasted by writer Charles Dickens and dogged by financial problems throughout his adult life.
Haydon, who died a gruesome death after committing suicide in 1846, has continued to fascinate since his early demise.
The lecture is given by Owen Ryles, Chief Executive of the Plymouth Athenaeum, an organisation of which Haydon was an early member.
Owen is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an alumnus of Plymouth College of Art.