Search
DONATE
  • Supporting the profession
  • Membership
    • Join
    • In memoriam
  • News
  • Events
  • History
    • The Society’s History
    • Archive item of the month
  • Contact Us
Menu

Archive Item of the Month – January 2021

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) 

Haydn left Vienna on 1 December 1790 for a visit to London in the company of violinist Johann Peter Salomon (1734-1815, Member A069). They arrived in Dover on the afternoon of 1 January 1791. On arriving in London, Haydn was a guest of the music publisher John Bland in his home above the shop at No.45 Holborn. Bland appears to have commissioned a portrait of the composer from Thomas Hardy (1756/7-1804), an artist who painted several portraits of musical figures; his portraits of Madame Mara, Madame Gautherot, Madame Krumpholz and Samuel Arnold, alongside the Haydn portrait, were exhibited at the Royal Academy in May 1792. Many of these were also engraved by the artist and the prints were sold at Bland’s music shop; the engraving of the Haydn portrait was first advertised for sale on 13 February 1792.

The artist John Hoppner was the son of German parents: his father was a physician at court, his mother worked at the royal palace, and John was a chorister in the Chapel Royal with extended active patronage given to him as a boy by King George III. Hoppner entered the Royal Academy in 1775 and, following an early period of landscape painting, soon turned to fashionable portrait painting. The Prince of Wales had several works by Hoppner hanging in St James’s Palace and appointed him Principal Portrait Painter in 1793. Haydn was invited by the Prince of Wales to visit his brother, Prince Frederick (1763-1827), Duke of York, at Oatlands near Weybridge in Surrey. In his notebook Haydn wrote on 24 November 1791 

“…The Prince of Wales wants my portrait. For 2 days we played music for 4 hours in the evening, that is, from 10 o’clock till 2 o’clock in the morning, then we had supper and went to bed at 3 o’clock”,

and in a letter to Maria Anna von Genzinger (1754-1793) of 20 December 1791 he wrote  

“… The Prince of Wales is having my portrait painted just now and the picture is to hang in his room …”  
(translated in H.C. Robbins Landon, The Collected Correspondence and London Notebooks of Joseph Haydn, pp.272 and 123). 

Oil on canvas attributed to Mather Brown (1761-1831) after the portrait by John Hoppner (1758-1810)

Oil on canvas attributed to Mather Brown (1761-1831) after the portrait by John Hoppner (1758-1810). 

The portrait was started by Hoppner but had not been finished by the time Haydn left England on 23 July 1792. A writer in the Quarterly Review noted “it was so striking a likeness of this extraordinary man, that the Prince of Wales, for whom it was painted, would not permit Hoppner to touch it after his departure”. The portrait remained unfinished at the time of the artist’s death in 1810 and was then purchased by the Prince of Wales as an “unfinished portrait” (see Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 406987).

Following a portrait of Prince Frederick in 1788, Mather Brown was appointed as History and Portrait Painter to the Prince. It is not known when Mather Brown’s copy of the Hoppner portrait of Haydn was made, although it was acquired by the RSM in 1867.

Further literature: 

  1. H.C. Robbins Landon, Haydn in England, 1791-1795 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1983). 
  2. H.C. Robbins Landon, The Collected Correspondence and London Notebooks of Joseph Haydn (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1959). 
  3. Christopher Hogwood, Haydn’s visits to England (London: The Folio Society, 1980). 

Join our mailing list

* indicates required
Tweets by @RSMusicians

The Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain
Registered address:
26 Fitzroy Square
London W1T 6BT
020 7629 6137

Founded 1738
Incorporated by Royal Charters 1790 & 1987
Former Patron: Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
President: Judith Weir CBE
Registered Charity Number 208879

facebook.com/royalsocietyofmusicians
Twitter: @RSMusicians
Privacy Policy I Cookie Policy
All content on this website is
© The Royal Society of Musicians.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by understanding our site visitors. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of the cookies. Click on "Reject" to withdraw your consent and read our Cookie policy for more information.
Cookie policy Reject Accept
Manage consent

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
CookieDurationDescription
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics1 yearThis cookies is set by GDPR Cookie Consent WordPress Plugin. The cookie is used to remember the user consent for the cookies under the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary1 yearThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
DYNSRVsessionThis cookie is used for load balancing purposes to decide which server to send the visitor.
Analytics
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
CookieDurationDescription
_ga2 yearsThis cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors.
_gid1 dayThis cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the website is doing. The data collected including the number of visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages visted in an anonymous form.
Others
Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet.
Functional
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
CookieDurationDescription
langThis cookie is used to store the language preferences of a user to serve up content in that stored language the next time user visit the website.
Performance
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
CookieDurationDescription
_gat1 minuteThis cookie is installed by Google Universal Analytics to throttle the request rate to limit the colllection of data on high traffic sites.
SAVE & ACCEPT
Powered by CookieYes Logo