‘Chairing the Member’ by Benjamin Robert Haydon, 1828. This oil on panel by Haydon depicts a crowd scene: central focus is a group causing mayhem, two male figures are borne on the shoulders of the group. Another one, wearing a red waistcoat and coat, white breeches and a Napoleonic hat carrying a long pole attempts to challenge three guards. A small child is also involved. On the right a man in a red coat and white shirt with black tie sits drunkenly on a water butt holding a bottle. He is aided by a woman in a black dress and bonnet, a young girl and a toddler holding a hoop. On the left a drunken figure has collapsed onto the floor beside a table laden with glasses and carafes of wine. Two further bottles and a pineapple sit in a barrel on the ground. An elderly man watches from an upstairs window on the right and another figure with a red flag hangs out of an upper window left.
Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846) was a British artist who focused on painting historical scenes. Haydon exhibited the finished picture this one is associated with, and its companion, along with “Solomon” and “Jerusalem” at the Western Bazaar in Bond Street, prompting Charles Lamb’s comment that “Perhaps the subject is a little discordantly placed opposite to another act of Chairing, where the huzzahs were Hosannahs”. He sold it to an Exeter gentleman for £300, £225 less than its worth and was disappointed that the King did not buy it together with the “Election”: Haydon had judged it “a satire touching so nearly on depravity that nobody but a King could sanction it” (Autobiography II). This work is a sketch for the larger version in the Tate Gallery, London.
