Little Memoirs of the 19th Century | Page 5

England, and deposited at Lord Elgin's house in Park Lane. Haydon carelessly agreed, knowing nothing of the wonders he was to see, and the two friends proceeded to Park Lane, where they were ushered through a yard to a dirty shed, in which lay the world-famous Marbles.
'The first thing I fixed my eyes on,' to quote Haydon's own words, 'was the wrist of a figure in one of the female groups, in which were visible the radius and ulna. I was astonished, for I had never seen them hinted at in any wrist in the antique. I darted my eye to the elbow, and saw the outer condyle visibly affecting the shape, as in nature. That combination of nature and repose which I had felt was so much wanting for high art was here displayed to midday conviction. My heart beat. If I had seen nothing else, I had beheld sufficient to help me to nature for the rest of my life. But when I turned to the Theseus, and saw that every form was altered by action or repose-when I saw that the two sides of his back varied as he rested on his elbow; and again, when in the figure of the fighting metope, I saw the muscle shown under one armpit in that instantaneous action of darting out, and left out in the other armpits; when I saw, in short, the most heroic style of art, combined with all the essential detail of everyday life, the thing was done at once and for ever.... Here were the principles which the great Greeks in their finest time established, and here was I, the most prominent historical student, perfectly qualified to appreciate all this by my own determined mode of study.'
On returning to his painting-room, Haydon, feeling utterly disgusted with his attempt at the heroic in the form and action of Dentatus, obliterated what he calls 'the abominable mass,' and breathed as if relieved of a nuisance. Through Lord Mulgrave he obtained an order to draw from the Marbles, and devoted the next three months to mastering their secrets, and bringing his hand and mind into subjection to the principles that they displayed. 'I rose with the sun,' he writes, with the glow of his first enthusiasm still upon him, 'and opened my eyes to the light only to be conscious of my high pursuit. I sprang from my bed, dressed like one possessed, and passed the day, noon, and the night, in the same dream of abstracted enthusiasm; secluded from the world, regardless of its feelings, impregnable to disease, insensible to contempt.' He painted his heads, figures, and draperies over and over again, feeling that to obliterate was the only way to improve. His studio soon filled with fashionable folk, who came to see the 'extraordinary picture painted by a young man who had never had the advantages of foreign travel.' Haydon believed, with the simplicity of a child, in all these flattering prophecies of glory and fame, and imagined that the Academy would welcome with open arms so promising a student, one, moreover, who had been trained in its own school. He redoubled his efforts, and in March 1809, 'Dentatus' was finished.
'The production of this picture,' he naively explains, 'must and will be considered as an epoch in English art. The drawing in it was correct and elevated, and the perfect forms and system of the antique were carried into painting, united with the fleshy look of everyday life. The colour, light and shadow, the composition and the telling of the story were complete.' His contemporaries did not form quite so flattering an estimate of the work. It was badly hung, a fate to which many an artist of three-and-twenty has had to submit, before and since; but Haydon writes as if no such injustice had been committed since the world began, and was persuaded that the whole body of Academicians was leagued in spite and jealousy against him. Lord Mulgrave gave him sixty guineas in addition to the hundred he had first promised, which seems a fair price for the second work of an obscure artist, but poor Haydon fancied that his professional prospects had suffered from the treatment of the Academy, that people of fashion (on whose attentions he set great store) were neglecting him, and that he was a marked man. A sea-trip to Plymouth with Wilkie gave his thoughts a new and more healthy turn. Together, the friends visited Sir Joshua's birthplace, and roamed over the moors and combes of Devonshire. Before returning to town, they spent a delightful fortnight with Sir George Beaumont at Coleorton, where, says Haydon, 'we dined with the Claude and Rembrandt before us, and breakfasted with the Rubens landscape, and did nothing, morning, noon, and night, but think