- Joined
- Jul 20, 2002
- Messages
- 4,187
Marriages come unstuck with petulant acts of revenge. Recent instances have seen partners distribute the contents of an expensive wine cellar on neighbours' doorsteps, or take the scissors to their wardrobe. But for a really visceral act of spite, it perhaps takes an artist.
Rejoined in matrimony: Francis Hayman and his first wife
in the picture of harmony he created, then destroyed
An astonishing discovery in a provincial saleroom in America has revealed the last hateful rites of the marriage of Francis Hayman, one of the most prominent artists in early Georgian England.
If every picture tells a story, it is fair to say that art historians have been flummoxed by Hayman's earliest known self-portrait, done around 1735. He painted himself at work with palette and brush in hand but otherwise his picture is horribly composed. Who or what was he painting? Why is only a sliver of the canvas on which he is working visible? And why on earth is his right knee and the lower portion of both legs missing? Hayman, then living in Exeter, was either having an extremely bad paint day or..
Yesterday, the West End art dealer Philip Mould said he believed that he had found the answers. The self-portrait is just half (the left-hand half) of the picture. Mr Mould says he has discovered a previously unknown right-hand section revealing that the picture was in fact a double portrait, showing Hayman painting his first wife.
Mr Mould, a prominent art detective, thinks that Hayman now in the big league since the Tate Gallery paid £1 million for his portrait of Samuel Richardson in August had almost completed the picture when the marriage collapsed.
Wanting no memory of his young wife, he cut the canvas in two not a straightforward task if it meant dismembering his own legs, but a decision perhaps easily made if he was in a rage finished the image of himself and disposed of the incomplete wife.
Mr Mould bought the "lost" half at an auction in rural New Hampshire recently. After shipping it back to Britain, he had later over-painting removed and the knee of a man wearing brown trousers suddenly appeared in the bottom left-hand side of the picture. Mr Mould suspected that he had bought only one half of a portrait.
Recognising the style of Hayman, the dealer started to examine surviving pictures by the artist and soon matched it up with the self-portrait, which has been hanging in the Royal Albert Memorial Art Gallery in Hayman's home city of Exeter since 1963.
Mr Mould said: "The pictures fit perfectly. The rest of the canvas is there, and his knee, and his legs lost in the folds of her dress.
"What chance of finding two halves of a painting torn apart 300 years ago? It's pretty fantastic."
But only part of the mystery is solved. Biographers know nothing of Hayman's first wife not even her name other than that she existed and the marriage ended around 1735.
Hayman was certainly not a kindly man, to women at least, and cutting the painting in two appears to fit a pattern of misogyny. His second wife, Susanna, wrote to him from France, where she had been ordered by doctors for her health, beseeching him to fetch her. He refused.
Later, he was presented with the bill for her funeral. He told a friend: "Well, I ought not to grumble for she would have paid such a bill for me with pleasure."
Mr Mould is convinced that the found portrait is of the first wife. He said: "From what we know of him, he seems to be an irascible sod."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/20/nart20.xml
maximus otter
Rejoined in matrimony: Francis Hayman and his first wife
in the picture of harmony he created, then destroyed
An astonishing discovery in a provincial saleroom in America has revealed the last hateful rites of the marriage of Francis Hayman, one of the most prominent artists in early Georgian England.
If every picture tells a story, it is fair to say that art historians have been flummoxed by Hayman's earliest known self-portrait, done around 1735. He painted himself at work with palette and brush in hand but otherwise his picture is horribly composed. Who or what was he painting? Why is only a sliver of the canvas on which he is working visible? And why on earth is his right knee and the lower portion of both legs missing? Hayman, then living in Exeter, was either having an extremely bad paint day or..
Yesterday, the West End art dealer Philip Mould said he believed that he had found the answers. The self-portrait is just half (the left-hand half) of the picture. Mr Mould says he has discovered a previously unknown right-hand section revealing that the picture was in fact a double portrait, showing Hayman painting his first wife.
Mr Mould, a prominent art detective, thinks that Hayman now in the big league since the Tate Gallery paid £1 million for his portrait of Samuel Richardson in August had almost completed the picture when the marriage collapsed.
Wanting no memory of his young wife, he cut the canvas in two not a straightforward task if it meant dismembering his own legs, but a decision perhaps easily made if he was in a rage finished the image of himself and disposed of the incomplete wife.
Mr Mould bought the "lost" half at an auction in rural New Hampshire recently. After shipping it back to Britain, he had later over-painting removed and the knee of a man wearing brown trousers suddenly appeared in the bottom left-hand side of the picture. Mr Mould suspected that he had bought only one half of a portrait.
Recognising the style of Hayman, the dealer started to examine surviving pictures by the artist and soon matched it up with the self-portrait, which has been hanging in the Royal Albert Memorial Art Gallery in Hayman's home city of Exeter since 1963.
Mr Mould said: "The pictures fit perfectly. The rest of the canvas is there, and his knee, and his legs lost in the folds of her dress.
"What chance of finding two halves of a painting torn apart 300 years ago? It's pretty fantastic."
But only part of the mystery is solved. Biographers know nothing of Hayman's first wife not even her name other than that she existed and the marriage ended around 1735.
Hayman was certainly not a kindly man, to women at least, and cutting the painting in two appears to fit a pattern of misogyny. His second wife, Susanna, wrote to him from France, where she had been ordered by doctors for her health, beseeching him to fetch her. He refused.
Later, he was presented with the bill for her funeral. He told a friend: "Well, I ought not to grumble for she would have paid such a bill for me with pleasure."
Mr Mould is convinced that the found portrait is of the first wife. He said: "From what we know of him, he seems to be an irascible sod."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/20/nart20.xml
maximus otter
