Gallery for Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "On a Portrait of Wordsworth"

A monument to the mind-in-creation, Benjamin Robert Haydon’s Wordsworth on Helvellyn (1842) is one of Romanticism’s iconic images. It gives concrete form to the romantic critic William Hazlitt’s description of a William Wordsworth who “lives in the busy solitude of his own heart; in the deep silence of thought” (19: 11). The twentieth-century art historian A. C. Sewter considered it not just the best portrait of Wordsworth, but “the finest portrait of the nineteenth century” (324). And in the words of the critic and biographer Stephen Gill, it is “what an image of Wordsworth…

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, posed twice in 1839 for Benjamin Robert Haydon so that Haydon could paint a portrait of him (exact dates not known).  The resulting painting (oil on canvas) shows Wellington at sunrise overlooking the field of Waterloo, where Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated for the last time.  This painting is a companion to Haydon's portrait of Napoleon on St. Helena gazing across the sea at sunset.  Image:  …

In 1829, Benjamin Robert Haydon painted a first version of Napoleon Musing after Sunset, which was exhibited at the Western Exchange in 1830.  Haydon later painted 23 versions and replics of this work, including the one pictured here.  The later full-length version was titled Napoleon Musing at St. Helena.  In 1831, William Wordsworth wrote of this painting, "If I can command my thoughts I will write something about your Picture, in prose for the Muse has forsaken me - being scared away by the villainous aspect of the Times."  Image:  …