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 Hayes with Haydon's old pupil Eastlake as secretary, his suggestions and offers of assistance met with a cold reception. He ruined his chances of favour in high quarters by an intemperate letter to the ‘Times’ against what he called ‘the German nuisance,’ after the visit of the German artist Cornelius to this country had roused a suspicion that German artists were to be employed. He competed without success at the cartoon exhibition in 1843; and in 1845, with the courage of despair, he determined to paint and exhibit to the public his projected series of six pictures to ‘illustrate the best government to regulate without cramping the liberties of mankind.’ Of these he finished two only, the ‘Banishment of Aristides’ and ‘Nero playing the lyre during the burning of Rome,’ which were exhibited at the Egyptian Hall in 1846. To his intense irritation, Tom Thumb, the celebrated dwarf, was drawing crowds to another room of the same building at the same time. He closed his exhibition with a loss of 111l. 8s. 10d., and bravely set to work at the third of the series, ‘King Alfred,’ but the strain was too great. He committed suicide on 22 June 1846.

The coroner's jury brought in a verdict of insanity. Haydon employed his last hours in writing a will, in which he reviewed his life, and expressed his last wishes in a manner unusually calm and clear. But he had lived for a great part of his life on the borders of suicide, if not of insanity. He started with a few ideas so firmly set that nothing would alter their direction until the inevitable catastrophe. He was pure in thought and act, generous, lofty in aim, a good husband, father, and friend. His mind was wide in its grasp and well cultivated, his judgment sound in matters unconnected with himself and his art. His life, like his art, was heroic at least in scale and intention. If his vanity and his unscrupulousness in money matters transcended all ordinary standards, so also did his energy and his power of endurance. Unfortunately his dreams for the glory of art and the glory of his country were so bound up with the glory of Haydon as to taint his whole career with egotism. As Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A., wrote, ‘his pictures are himself, and fail as he failed.’ They had the same fault of self-assertion and violence. With an occasional approach to the sublime, as in his head of Lazarus, they are seldom without some exaggeration which repels. His drawing, remarkable for its knowledge of anatomy, was without elegance and defective in proportion. His colour, rich at times, was very unequal, and seldom harmonious as a whole. Vigorous in their conception, his pictures are without refinement or pathos; they may impress, but they seldom or never please. As a lecturer and writer on art his success was more assured. In spite of their attacks on the Academy, and other outbursts of personal feeling, his writings are full of sound teaching, expressed in a clear, picturesque, and vigorous style.

Besides many ‘Descriptions’ of his pictures, copies of some of which in the British Museum have manuscript notes by the author, Haydon published (all in 8vo): 1. ‘The Judgment of Connoisseurs upon Works of Art compared with that of Professional Men, in reference more particularly to the Elgin Marbles,’ London, 1816. 2. ‘New Churches considered with respect to the opportunities they afford for the Encouragement of Painting,’ London, 1818. 3. ‘Comparaison entre la tête d'un des Chevaux de Verise, qui étaient sur l'arc triomphale des Thuilleries, et qu'on dit être de Lysippe, et la Tête de Cheval d'Elgin du Parthenon,’ London, 1818. 4. ‘Descriptions of Drawings from the Cartoons and Elgin Marbles by Mr. Haydon's Pupils’ [signed ‘B. R. H.’], London, 1819. 5. ‘Some Enquiry into the Causes which have obstructed the Course of Historical Painting for the last seventy years in England,’ 1829. 6. ‘On Academies of Art (more particularly the Royal Academy) and their pernicious effect on the Genius of Europe. Lecture xiii.,’ London, 1839. 7. ‘Thoughts on the relative value of Fresco and Oil Painting as applied to the Architectural Decorations of the Houses of Parliament,’ London, 1842. 8. ‘Lectures on Painting and Design,’ 2 vols., London, 1844–6. There are some manuscript notes by Haydon in the British Museum copy of Williams's Life of Sir T. Lawrence.

Haydon's eldest son,, (1822–1887), was engaged in the Public Record Office, and besides ‘Calendars of Documents’ included in the deputy-keeper's reports, edited the ‘Eulogium Historiarum’ for the Rolls Series in 1868. He committed suicide, 29 Oct. 1887. His second son,, (1827–1886), was for a time in the navy, and was afterwards inspector of factories. He was dismissed from the service in 1867, when he published a letter addressed to the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, and entitled ‘Our Officials at the Home Office.’ He published his father's ‘Correspondence and Table-Talk’ with a memoir in 1876. He died at Bethlehem Hospital on 12 Nov. 1886, aged 59. [Tom Taylor's Life of Haydon; F. W. Haydon's Benjamin Robert Haydon, his Correspondence and Table Talk; Cunningham's Lives (Heaton); Masterpieces of English Art (art. on