George Hayter

Self Portrait of Sir George Hayter in 1843, (in possession of the artist's family)

Sir George Hayter (1792-1871), English painter, (b St James’s, London, 17 Dec 1792; d St Marylebone, London, 18 Jan 1871). English painter and printmaker. He was the son of Charles Hayter (1761–1835), a miniature painter and popular drawing-master and teacher of perspective who was appointed Professor of Perspective and Drawing to Princess Charlotte. and published a well-known introduction to perspective and other works.

In his early youth he went to sea as a Midshipman in the Royal Navy, but in 1808 George entered the Royal Academy Schools where he studied under Fuseli, and in 1815 was appointed Painter of Miniatures and Portraits by Princess Charlotte. Hayter was awarded the British Institution’s premium for history painting for the Prophet Ezra (1815; Downton Castle), purchased by Richard Payne Knight. Encouraged by his patron, John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford, he travelled to Italy to study in 1816. There he met Canova, who's studio he attended while painting his portrait, where he absorbed Canova’s classical style. He is also believed to have learned sculpture from Canova at this time. Canova was Perpetual Principal of the Accademia di San Luca (Rome's premier artistic institution) and doubtless put Hayter forward for honorary membership on the strength of his painting ‘The Tribute Money’ which was very favourably received in Rome. Hayter thereby became the Academy's youngest ever member.

Returning to London in 1818, Hayter practised as a portrait painter in oils and history painter. Dubbed ‘The Phoenix’ by William Beckford, Hayter showed a pomposity that irritated his fellow artists, but he mixed freely with many aristocratic families. His unconventional domestic life (separated from his wife, he lived openly with his mistress) set him apart from official Academy circles: he was never elected to the Royal Academy.

Hayter was most productive and innovative during the 1820s. George Agar-Ellis (later Lord Dover) commissioned the Trial of Queen Caroline in the House of Lords in 1820 (exh. 1823; London, National Portrait Gallery); painted on a large scale (2.33×2.66 m), Hayter’s first (and most successful) contemporary history painting revealed a taste for high drama effectively realised. In the Trial of William, Lord Russell, in the Old Bailey in 1683 (1825; Woburn Abbey) Hayter celebrated John Russell’s ancestry, in a work reminiscent of fashionable tableaux vivants of the country-house set. In 1826 Hayter settled in Italy. The Banditti of Kurdistan Assisting Georgians in Carrying off Circassian Women (untraced), completed in Florence for John Proby, 1st Earl Carysfort, demonstrated Hayter’s assimilation of the style and exotic subject-matter of contemporary French Romantic art. He was forced by the scandal of his mistress’s accidental death in 1827 to move from Florence to Rome, and by late 1828 he was in Paris, where his portraits of English society members (some exhibited at the Salon in 1831) were stylistically akin to the work of recent French portrait painters such as François Gérard.

In 1831 Hayter returned to England. His grandiose plan to paint the first sitting after the passage of the Reform Bill resulted in Moving the Address to the Crown on the Opening of the First Reformed Parliament in the Old House of Commons, 5 February 1833 (1833–43; London, N.P.G.), for which he executed nearly 400 portrait studies in oil. Having painted the young Princess Victoria (1832–3; destr.; oil sketch, Brit. Royal Col.), Hayter was not a surprising choice as the new Queen’s Portrait and Historical Painter, but some Academicians were angered. In 1841 he became Principal Painter-in-Ordinary, and in 1842 he was knighted. Hayter painted several royal ceremonies, such as Queen Victoria’s coronation of 1837 and marriage of 1840 (both Brit. Royal Col.). He also painted royal portraits, but because Albert, the Prince Consort, preferred German painters such as F. X. Winterhalter, Hayter was eased out of royal circles.

Self Portrait of Sir George Hayter in 1863, (in possession of the artist's family)

By the mid-1840s Hayter’s portrait style was considered old-fashioned. He adjusted his type of history painting to suit the more literal taste of the early Victorian era (e.g. Wellington Viewing Napoleon’s Effigy at Madame Tussaud’s; destr. 1925; engraving, 1854). He also produced fluent landscape watercolours (many of Italian views), etchings (he published a volume in 1833), decorative designs and sculpture. The contents of Hayter’s studio were auctioned at Christie’s, London, on 19 April 1871. His younger brother, John (1800–95), was also an artist, known chiefly as a portrait draughtsman in chalks and crayons.

BIBLIOGRAPHY R. Ormond: Early Victorian Portraits, 2 vols, London N.P.G. cat. (London, 1973) Drawings by Sir George and John Hayter (exh. cat. by B. Coffey [Bryant], London, Morton Morris, 1982) [incl. checklist of prints] R. Walker: Regency Portraits, 2 vols, London N.P.G. cat. (London, 1986) O. Millar: The Victorian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1992) B. Bryant: ‘Sir George Hayter’s Drawings at Duncombe Park: Family Ties and a “Melancholy Event”’, Apollo, cxxxv (1992), pp. 240–50 [incl. newly pubd letter of 1827]

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This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)