A Genius for Failure: The Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon

Author: Paul O'Keeffe
Publisher: The Bodley Head Ltd
Category: Art History: c 1800 to c 1900, Paintings, Individual Artists, Art Monographs, Biography: Arts & Entertainment
Book Format: Hardcover

* Haydon's first attempt at suicide ended when the low calibre bullet fired from his pistol fractured his skull but failed to penetrate his brain. * His second attempt also failed- a deep slash across his throat left a large pool of blood at the entrance to his studio, but he was still able to reach his easel on the opposite side of the room. *Only his third attempt, another cut to the throat which sprayed blood across his unfinished canvas, was successful. He died face-down before the bespattered 'Alfred and the First British Jury', his final bid 'to improve the taste of the English people' through the High Art of historical painting. * Such intensity, struggle and near-comic inability to succeed encapsulate Haydon's career. Thirty years before his death his huge, iconic paintings had made him the toast of early 19th-century London, drawing paying crowds to the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly for months and leading to nationwide tours. * However, his attempt to repeat such success three months before his death was to destroy him- barely a soul turned up, leaving the desperate painter alone, humiliated, and facing financial ruin. * In A Genius for Failure Paul O'Keeffe makes clear that the real tragedy of Haydon lay in the extent to which his failures were unwittingly engineered by his own actions - his refusal to resort to the painting of fashionable portraits, for example, and his self-destructively acrimonious relationship with the RA. * The company he kept - Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington, among many others - and the momentous events he lived through - The Battle of Waterloo, the Coronation of George IV, and the passing of the first Parliamentary Reform Bill - make A Genius for Failure not only the definitive biography of this fascinating and tragic painter, but a stirring portrayal of an age.

Author Biography

Paul O'Keeffe is a freelance lecturer and writer based in Liverpool. He gained his Ph. D. with a scholarly edition of Wyndham Lewis's Tarr, and won critical acclaim with his 2000 study of Lewis, Some Sort of Genius.

About Paul O'Keeffe
Paul O'Keeffe is a freelance lecturer and writer based in Liverpool. He gained his Ph. D. with a scholarly edition of Wyndham Lewis's Tarr, and won critical acclaim with his 2000 study of Lewis, Some Sort of Genius.

(BK-9780224062473)

SKU BK-9780224062473
Barcode # 9780224062473
Brand The Bodley Head Ltd
Artist / Author Paul O'Keeffe
Shipping Weight 0.5000kg
Shipping Width 0.490m
Shipping Height 0.016m
Shipping Length 2.400m
Assembled Length 1.620m
Assembled Height 49.000m
Assembled Width 240.000m
Type Hardcover

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