Sir Francis Seymour Haden
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Sir Francis Seymour Haden
by Charles West Cope
Red and black chalk, 1860
9 in. x 4 3/4 in. (228 mm x 120 mm) overall
NPG 5413
This portraitback to top
This slight but careful and perceptive drawing is dated to 1860, presumably by the artist. At this date the sitter was aged around 41. He and Charles West Cope probably met in the mid-1850s through the Etching Club, of which Cope had been a founder member in 1838, [1] and in which Haden became active when he resumed etching after 1855. In his Reminiscences, Cope gave a summary account of the Club’s early years, listing its joint projects such as illustrations to Goldsmith, Shakespeare and Milton, and explaining that the Club’s ‘great attraction consisted in the pleasant meetings, where brotherly kindness abounded, and where pleasure was ballasted by a little business and occasional cheques’. He also gave members’ names, apparently in order of election, where Haden is listed after John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt and before John Evan Hodgson and Richard Ansdell. [2] Elsewhere he records Hunt’s election on 5 March 1856, [3] which suggests an approximate date (within a few months) for Haden’s membership.
Cope and Haden were also keen anglers, and may have both been present on the Club’s excursion to Maidenhead on 8 April 1856. [4] A few months later, apparently at Haden’s suggestion, Cope and his family took a holiday at Sonning, also on the Thames, where the Hadens were also staying. His diary records taking tea on 1 September with Mrs Haden – ‘charming woman, and nice children’ [5] – and subsequent fishing trips. ‘[Haden] and I occasionally fished for chub with a large fly, and had success,’ he wrote, also recalling a misadventure when Haden’s hook was swallowed by a pet duck, whose owner rejected Haden’s offer to pay for it, and describing the incident as ‘a cottage tragedy’. [6] From these anecdotes it can be inferred that the two men were cordial if not close friends. Although not a founder member of the Society of Painter-Etchers in 1880, Cope agreed to join its council in March 1881. [7]
Cope’s memoirs do not include such diary details during 1860, but it seems likely that the present drawing was made during a gathering of the Etching Club. Haden is shown in the prime of life, the smooth profile giving only a hint of the frown lines on his forehead and unruly hair that are seen clearly in his etched self-portrait of 1862 (see ‘All known portraits’). Here the eye is most strongly delineated, and the chin also firmly marked.
Dr Jan Marsh
Footnotesback to top
1) Hopkinson 1999, p.14.
2) Cope 1891, pp.136–7.
3) Cope 1891, p.210.
4) Cope 1891, p.211.
5) Cope 1891, p.215.
6) Cope 1891, pp.217–18.
7) Hopkinson 1999, p.14.
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