Thomas Alphonso Hayley (5 October 1780 – 2 May 1800) was an English sculptor.

Life

Hayley, the natural son of

William Hayley William Hayley (9 November 174512 November 1820) was an English writer, best known as the biographer of his friend William Cowper. Biography Born at Chichester, he was sent to Eton in 1757, and to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1762; his connec ...

, was born in 1780, and showed in 1794 signs of a love for sculpture. He was encouraged to learn drawing by

Joseph Wright of Derby Joseph Wright (3 September 1734 – 29 August 1797), styled Joseph Wright of Derby, was an English landscape and portrait painter. He has been acclaimed as "the first professional painter to express the spirit of the Industrial Revolution". Wr ...

, and having attracted the attention of the painter George Romney, and of

John Flaxman John Flaxman (6 July 1755 – 7 December 1826) was a British sculptor and draughtsman, and a leading figure in British and European Neoclassicism. Early in his career, he worked as a modeller for Josiah Wedgwood's pottery. He spent several yea ...

, was in 1795 articled to Flaxman as a resident pupil for three years. He appears to have shown much promise, even experimenting in oil-painting. In 1798, however, he showed symptoms of ill-health, arising from curvature of the spine, and was compelled to return to his father's cottage at

Felpham Felpham (, sometimes pronounced locally as ''Felf-fm'' or ''Fel-thm'') is a village and civil parish in the Arun District of West Sussex, England. Although sometimes considered part of the urban area of greater Bognor Regis, it is a village and ...

in Sussex, where, after two years of suffering, he died on 2 May 1800. He was buried nearby at

Eartham Eartham is a village and civil parish in the Chichester (district), District of Chichester in West Sussex, England located northeast of Chichester east of the A285 road. There is an Anglican parish church dedicated to St Margaret and a public ...

; his monument there was carved and erected by Flaxman, with an epitaph composed by his father. Hayley modelled busts of Flaxman,

Lord Thurlow Baron Thurlow, of Thurlow in the County of Suffolk, is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was created on 11 June 1792 for the lawyer and politician Edward Thurlow, 1st Baron Thurlow, with remainder to his younger brothers and the heirs ...

, and

James Stanier Clarke James Stanier Clarke (1766–1834) was an English cleric, naval author and man of letters. He became librarian in 1799 to George, Prince of Wales (later Prince Regent, then George IV). Early life The eldest son of Edward Clarke and Anne Gren ...

. A medallion by him of Romney was engraved by Caroline Watson for his father's ''Life of Romney''. In his father's ''Essays on Sculpture'' (1800), there are a portrait of young Hayley from a medallion by Flaxman, and a drawing by him of ''The Death of Demosthenes'', both engraved by

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake has become a seminal figure in the history of the Romantic poetry, poetry and visual art of the Roma ...

. His father wrote many sonnets to his memory.

References

Attribution *

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hayley, Thomas Alphonso 1780 births 1800 deaths 18th-century English sculptors