Don Quixote Brought Home by the Peasant after the Tilt with the Toledo Merchant
Description
‘Don Quixote Brought Home by the Peasant after the Tilt with the Toledo Merchant’ by Francis Hayman, about 1765-1770. This painting in oil on canvas depicts the peasant (yellow jacket, green breeches) helps a sickly looking Don Quixote (green jacket, red breeches) off his mule while a woman, left, stretches out to help. Two further figures stand in the doorway of a cottage outside which the action is happening. This painting, being based off the Spanish novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes from 1605. This painting in particular was based on an earlier composition engraved by Hayman and Gravelot for the first edition of Tobias Smollett’s English translation of Don Quixote from 1755.
Francis Hayman (1708-1776) was an English artist, known for being one of the founding members of the Royal Academy in 1768. Hayman played to the French Rococo style, and depicted literary scenes.