SOURCE: George, Eric. “Haydon on Haydon.” In The Life and Death of Benjamin Robert Haydon, Historical Painter: 1786-1846. 1948. Reprint, with additions by Dorothy George, pp. 374-84. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.

In the following essay, George, using as his source W. B. Pope's Diary of Benjamin Robert Haydon (1960-63), the first publication of the full text of Haydon's Journals, focuses on Haydon's entries describing his “darker side”—the anguish over his own sanity, and those feelings of anxiety and despondency that plagued the artist throughout his entire career.

Painters & Poets are liable to the erruptions of different feelings

(Oct. 1809).

Does Haydon's darker side, the hypochondria and the fits of despair, editorially muted by Taylor, affect the question of his sanity? He brooded on insanity as he brooded on suicide, expected Leigh Hunt to die insane, feared the same fate for Frank, and thought Frank's instability inherited from himself. Hypochondria, like...