'A vision free
And noble, Haydon, hath thine art released.
No portrait this with academic air,
This is the poet and his poetry.'
The year 1843 brought, as Haydon's biographer points out, 'the consummation of what he had so earnestly fought for, a competition of native artists to prove their capability for executing great monumental and decorative works; but with this came his own bitter disappointment at not being among the successful competitors. In all his struggles up to this point, Haydon had the consolation of hope that better times were coming. But now the good time for art was at hand, and he was passed over. The blow fell heavily--indeed, I may say, was mortal. He tried to cheat himself into the belief that the old hostile influences to which he attributed all his misfortunes, had been working here also, and that he should yet rise superior to their malice. He would not admit to himself that his powers were impaired--that he was less fit for great achievements in his art than he had been when he painted Solomon and Lazarus. But if he held this opinion, he held it alone. It was apparent to all, even to his warmest friends, that years of harass, humiliation, distraction, and conflict had enfeebled his energies, and led him to seek in exaggeration the effect he could no longer attain by well-measured force. His restless desire to have a hand in all that was projected for art, had wearied those in authority. He had shown himself too intractable to follow, and he had not inspired that confidence which might have given him a right to lead.'
Although Haydon loudly proclaimed his conviction that, in face of the hostility against him, his cartoons would not be successful, even though they were as perfect as Raphael's, yet it is obvious that he had not altogether relinquished hope. In a letter to his old pupil, Eastlake, who was secretary to the Fine Arts Commission, he says: 'I appeal to the Royal Commission, to the First Lord, to you the secretary, to Barry the architect, if I ought not to be indulged in my hereditary right to do this, viz., that when the houses are ready, cartoons done, colours mixed, and all at their posts, I shall be allowed, employed or not employed, to take the brush, and dip into the first colour, and put the first touch on the first intonaco. If that is not granted, I'll haunt every noble Lord and you, till you join my disturbed spirit on the banks of the Styx.'
On June 1, Haydon placed his two cartoons in Westminster Hall, and thanked his God that he had lived to see that day, adding with unconscious blasphemy, 'Spare my life, O Lord, until I have shown thy strength unto this generation, thy power unto that which is to come.' The miracle for which he had secretly hoped, while declaring his certainty of failure, did not happen. On June 27 he heard from Eastlake that his cartoons were not among those chosen for reward. Half stunned by the blow, anticipated though it had been, he makes but few comments on the news in his Journal, and those are written in a composed and reasonable tone. 'I went to bed last night in a decent state of anxiety,' he observes. 'It has given a great shock to my family, especially to my dear boy, Frank, and revived all the old horrors of arrest, execution, and debt. It is exactly what I expected, and is, I think, intentional.... I am wounded, and being ill from confinement, it shook me. (July 1st) A day of great misery. I said to my dear love, "I am not included." Her expression was a study. She said, "We shall be ruined." I looked up my letters, papers, and Journals, and sent them to my dear AEschylus Barrett. I burnt loads of private letters, and prepared for executions. Seven pounds was raised on my daughter's and Mary's dresses.'
The three money prizes were awarded to Armitage, Cope, and Watts, but it was announced that another competition, in fresco, would be held the following year, when the successful competitors would be intrusted with the decoration of the House of Lords. Haydon did not enter for this competition, but, as will presently appear, he refused to allow that he was beaten. On September 4 he removed his cartoons from Westminster Hall, with the comment: 'Thus ends the cartoon contest; and as the very first inventor and beginner of this mode of rousing the people when they were pronounced incapable of relishing refined works of art without colour, I am deeply wounded at the insult inflicted. These Journals witness under what trials I began them--how I called on my Creator for His blessing--how I trusted in Him, and how I have been degraded, insulted, and harassed. O Lord! Thou knowest best. I submit.'
During the year Haydon had finished his picture of 'Alexander and the Lion,' which he considered one of his finest works, though the British Gallery declined to hang it, and no patron offered to buy it. He had also painted for bread and cheese innumerable small replicas of 'Napoleon at St. Helena' and the 'Duke at Waterloo' for five guineas apiece. By the beginning of 1844 his spirits had outwardly revived, thanks to the anodyne of incessant labour, and he writes almost in the old buoyant vein: 'Another day of work, God be thanked! Put in the sea [in "Napoleon at St. Helena">[; a delicious tint. How exquisite is a bare canvas, sized alone, to work on; how the slightest colour, thin as water, tells; how it glitters in body; how the brush flies--now here--now there; it seems as if face, hands, sky, thought, poetry, and expression were hid in the handle, and streamed out as it touched the canvas. What magic! what fire! what unerring hand and eye! what power! what a gift of God! I bow, and am grateful.' On March 24 he came to the fatal decision to paint his own original designs for the House of Lords in a series of six large pictures, and exhibit them separately, a decision founded, as he believed, on supernatural inspiration. 'Awoke this morning,' he writes, 'with that sort of audible whisper Socrates, Columbus, and Tasso heard! "Why do you not paint your own designs for the House on your own foundation, and exhibit them?" I felt as if there was no chance of my ever being permitted to do them else, without control also. I knelt up in my bed, and prayed heartily to accomplish them, whatever might be the obstruction. I will begin them as my next great works; I feel as if they will be my last, and I think I shall then have done my duty. O God! bless the beginning, progression, and conclusion of these six great designs to illustrate the best government to regulate without cramping the energies of mankind.'
In July the frescoes sent in for competition were exhibited in Westminster Hall, and in the result six artists were commissioned to decorate the House of Lords, Maclise, Redgrave, Dyce, Cope, Horsley, and Thomas. 'I see,' writes Haydon, 'they are resolved that I, the originator of the whole scheme, shall have nothing to do with it; so I will (trusting in the great God who has brought me thus far) begin on my own inventions without employment.' The first of the series was 'Aristides hooted by the Populace,' and the conditions under which it was painted are described in his annual review of the year's work: 'I have painted a large Napoleon in four days and a half, six smaller different subjects, three Curtiuses, five Napoleons Musing, three Dukes and Copenhagens, George IV., and the Duke at Waterloo--half done Uriel--published my lectures--and settled composition of Aristides. I gave lectures at Liverpool, sometimes twice a day, and lectured at the Royal Institution. I have not been idle, but how much more I might have done!'
In 1845 Haydon exhibited his picture of 'Uriel and Satan' at the Academy, and 'after twenty-two years of abuse,' actually received a favourable notice in the Times, For the Uriel he was paid £200, but five other pictures remained upon his hands, their estimated value amounting to nearly a thousand pounds, and he was left to work at his Aristides with barely ten shillings for current expenses, and not a single commission in prospect. 'What a pity it is,' he observes, 'that a man of my order--sincerity, perhaps genius [in the Journal a private note is here inserted, "not perhaps">[, is not employed. What honour, what distinction would I not confer on my great country! However, it is my destiny to perform great things, not in consequence of encouragement, but in spite of opposition, and so let it be.' In the latter part of the year came one or two minor pieces of good fortune for which Haydon professed the profoundest gratitude, declaring that he was not good enough to deserve such blessings. The King of Hanover bought a Napoleon for £200, and a pupil came, who paid a like sum as premium. His son, Frank, who had taken his degree, changed his mind again about his profession, and now 'shrank from the publicity of the pulpit.' Haydon applied to Sir Robert Peel for an appointment for the youth, and Peel, who seems to have shown the utmost patience and kindness in his relations with the unfortunate artist, at once offered a post in the Record Office at £80 a year, an offer which was gladly accepted.
Thus relieved of immediate care, Haydon set to work on the second picture of his series, 'Nero playing the Lyre while Rome was burning.' The effect of his conception, as he foresaw it in his mind's eye, was so terrific that he 'fluttered, trembled, and perspired like a woman, and was obliged to sit down.' Under all the anxiety, the pressure, and the disappointment of Haydon's life, it must be remembered that there were enormous compensations in the shape of days and hours of absorbed and satisfied employment, days and hours such as seldom fall to the lot of the average good citizen and solvent householder. The following entry alone is sufficient proof that Haydon, even in his worst straits, was almost as much an object of envy as of compassion: 'Worked with such intense abstraction and delight for eight hours, with five minutes only for lunch, that though living in the noisiest quarter of all London, I never remember hearing all day a single cart, carriage, knock, cry, bark of man, woman, dog, or child. When I came out into the sunshine I said to myself, "Why, what is all this driving about?" though it has always been so for the last twenty-two years, so perfectly, delightfully, and intensely had I been abstracted. If that be not happiness, what is?'
Haydon had now staked all his hopes upon the exhibition in the spring of 1846 of the first two pictures in his series, 'Aristides' and 'Nero.' If the public flocked to see them, if it accorded him, as he expected, its enthusiastic support, he hoped that the Commission would be shamed into offering him public employment. If, on the other hand, the exhibition failed, he must have realised that he would be irretrievably ruined, with all his hopes for the future slain. Everything was to be sacrificed to this last grand effort. 'If I lose this moment for showing all my works,' he writes, 'it can never occur again. My fate hangs on doing as I ought, and seizing moments with energy. I shall never again have the opportunity of connecting myself with a great public commission by opposition, and interesting the public by the contrast. If I miss it, it will be a tide not taken at the flood.'