Benjamin Robert Haydon 1786-1846

Acquired by King Ernst I of Hanover from the artist through the offices of the Earl of Westmorland in 1844 for £200;
Thence by descent

General Verzeichnis der zum Koniglichen Ernst-August-Fideikommiss gehorigen Gegenstande, 1855;
Benjamin Robert Haydon, The Autobiography and Memoirs of Benjamin Robert Haydon, 1926, Vol.II, p.792;
Clarke Olney, Benjamin Robert Haydon, Historical Painter, 1952, p.220;
Eric George, The Life and Death of Benjamin Robert Haydon, Historical Painter 1786-1846, 1967, p.272

In 1829 Benjamin Robert Haydon, responding to the fascination of all things to do with Napoleon that swept England during that decade, painted his first small version of this painting for Thomas Kearsley.  Its brilliant conception, showing the Emperor at St. Helena, brooding over his past, meant that the subject became an enormous success when it was engraved the following year.  It summarised the grandeur and folly of the man who had taken on the might of Britain and who had failed. 

The Home Secretary, later Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel commissioned a much larger version shortly afterwards.  In 1843 the artist painted this even larger version which he exhibited at the British Institute and entered into the Art Lottery the following year.  It was then 'through the indefatigable exertions of the late Earl of Westmorland, one of Haydon's truest and kindest friends,... sold to the then King of Hanover and was placed by him in his palace at Herrenhausen'.  The King, Ernst I of Hanover, had good reason to own such a painting having seen action in the army during the Napoleonic Wars when he was Duke of Cumberland.