{"product_id":"a-genius-for-failure-the-life-of-benjamin-robert-haydon","title":"A Genius for Failure: The Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon","description":"Author: Paul O'Keeffe\u003cbr\u003eCategory: Nonfiction\u003cbr\u003eLanguage: English\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Vintage Digital\u003cbr\u003ePublication date: January 11, 2011\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e* Haydon's first attempt at suicide ended when the low calibre bullet fired from his pistol fractured his skull but failed to penetrate his brain.\n* His second attempt also failed: a deep slash across his throat left a large pool of blood at the entrance to his studio, but he was still able to reach his easel on the opposite side of the room.\n*Only his third attempt, another cut to the throat which sprayed blood across his unfinished canvas, was successful. He died face-down before the bespattered 'Alfred and the First British Jury', his final bid 'to improve the taste of the English people' through the High Art of historical painting.\n* Such intensity, struggle and near-comic inability to succeed encapsulate Haydon's career. Thirty years before his death his huge, iconic paintings had made him the toast of early 19th-century London, drawing paying crowds to the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly for months and leading to nationwide tours.\n* However, his attempt to repeat such success three months before his death was to destroy him: barely a soul turned up, leaving the desperate painter alone, humiliated, and facing financial ruin.\n* In A Genius for Failure Paul O'Keeffe makes clear that the real tragedy of Haydon lay in the extent to which his failures were unwittingly engineered by his own actions - his refusal to resort to the painting of fashionable portraits, for example, and his self-destructively acrimonious relationship with the RA.\n* The company he kept - Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington, among many others - and the momentous events he lived through - The Battle of Waterloo, the Coronation of George IV, and the passing of the first Parliamentary Reform Bill - make A Genius for Failure not only the definitive biography of this fascinating and tragic painter, but a stirring portrayal of an age.","brand":"Redrainforest","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":32433684250679,"sku":"9781446426586","price":15.59,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0258\/4664\/4791\/products\/a-genius-for-failure.jpg?v=1608188370","url":"https:\/\/redrainforest.myshopify.com\/products\/a-genius-for-failure-the-life-of-benjamin-robert-haydon","provider":"Redrainforest","version":"1.0","type":"link"}