HAYMAN (FRANCIS), R.A.
FRANCIS HAYMAN was born in Exeter in the year 1708. He studied under Mr. Robert Brown, portrait painter. He has been described as meriting the honour of being placed at the head of the English School of Historical Painters. By his agreeable manners he became intimate with the bon vivants of the age in which he lived. Being introduced to Fleetwood, the then manager of Drury Lane, he painted his scenes, and after the manager’s death married his widow. In Pasquin’s “Royal Academicians,” we have the following remarks upon this painter, “In the great point of professional taste, Hayman could not be arranged as exemplary. Yet I have many doubts if taste is in any instance wholly intuitive; and am inclined to think that we acquire taste by the progressive movements of early perception, which, by frequent subtle inroads upon the mind, make, in the issue, an establishment, and give a system and a hue to thought. We may discover original genius in a savage, but never any symptom of that correct association of idea and action which constitute that practical excellence which we denominate taste.” Hayman died February 2nd, 1776.
GLUTTONY.
Hayman was noted for his eating. When an apprentice, he and his fellow apprentices (some of whose appetites were but little inferior) used to dine at a public-house in the neighbourhood of the Mansion House. Instead of declining to treat with them, the shrewd landlord used to observe, “I should be absolutely ruined by those young painters, but for one circumstance, which is, that their extraordinary appetites have become objects of great celebrity and curiosity in this quarter of the City, where we are such judges of those things: the consequence of which is that every day we have a gormandizing exhibition, and my house is full of spectators to see the Great Eaters: the company then retire to my other rooms to talk the matter over; conversation produces thirst; and therefore I make up by the sale of my liquor for my loss by the devastation of my edibles. Long life to the painters, I say! May their appetites increase with the diminution of what they feed on!”
MARQUIS OF GRANBY AND THE NOBLE ART.
Being of a lively temper and attached to boxing, the painter frequently recommended the “noble art” to his sitters, in order to give a vivacity to the features. While painting the picture of the celebrated Marquis of Granby, also an admirer of the stimulating exercise with the gloves, the invitation was given and accepted for a few rounds, and at it they went. The contest soon grew warm, and the uproar soon attracted all the inmates of the house, who, much alarmed, rushed into the room, and beheld the pugilistic peer and painter rolling about and mauling each other like enraged bears. Pictures, palettes, the easel, and the other furniture of an artist’s room, were scattered in dire confusion. A few minutes sufficed to smooth their ruffled feathers, and replace the furniture; after which the marquis took his place in high spirits, and Hayman gave the finishing touch to the picture.
THE PAINTER’S FRIENDSHIP FOR QUIN.
In 1755, Hayman etched a small quarto plate of Quin, the actor, in the character of Falstaff, seated on a drum in a swaggering attitude, with his right elbow resting upon the hilt of his sword, by the side of the body of Hotspur. Quin and Hayman were inseparable friends, and so convivial that they seldom parted till daylight. One night, after “beating the rounds,” and making themselves gloriously drunk, they attempted, arm in arm, to cross a kennel, into which they both fell. When they had remained there a minute or two, Hayman, sprawling out his shambling legs, kicked Quin. “Holloa! what are you at now?” stuttered Quin. “At? why, endeavouring to get up, to be sure,” replied the painter; “for this don’t suit my palate.” “Pooh!” replied Quin, “remain where you are; the watchman will come by shortly, and he will take us both up.”