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Francis Hayman had evidently been working on his Paradise Lost designs for at least four years prior to their publication in Thomas Newton's edition of 1749, for in a letter to the artist dated 10 October 1745, David Garrick remarks, "Have You finish'd My Picture Yet? [D.sup.r] Newton has been here & prais'd it extravagantly; Your Drawings for Milton will do you great Service, I have promis'd the Doctor to read [y.sup.e] third Book & give him my opinion for the Drawing, [w.sup.ch] I'll send you." (1) Unfortunately, whatever opinions Garrick and Newton may have exchanged over Hayman's designs have not been found, and in the preface to his edition the editor makes no mention of the artist he praises to the actor. Still, Newton appears to have been satisfied with the artist's approach to Milton because he later engaged Hayman to produce designs for his 1752 edition of the poet's other poems.
Newton's edition was the first to feature a complete set of illustrations composed by a single English artist. (2) More importantly, that Hayman had been working on his Paradise Lost designs long before their publication and that he had solicited the opinion of Garrick suggests the artist carefully considered his interpretation. (3) In addition, Hayman's association with the London stage early in his career as a scene painter recommends a close examination of his work, for the theater by its very nature is an "intermedial" art form, defined by Peter Wagner as a form of intertextuality that integrates the musical, visual, and textual aspects of a work. (4) Indeed, like a stage director, Hayman appears to engage in a compositional manipulation that emerges as a visual form of literary criticism: he shows Adam and Eve gradually moving apart over a series of four designs leading up to the Temptation (books 4, 5, 7, and 8), a move that seems based on a reading of Adam as possessive. (5)
Although Hayman's theatrical associations clearly influence his work, the idea that a painter should be a keen reader of literature such as Paradise Lost was not alien to the early eighteenth century. Theories of how a history painter should be educated inform the practice of book illustration because they reveal a free interplay between the visual and verbal arts and a tradition of artists reading literature. John Dryden, for example, in the preface to his translation of C. A. Du Fresnoy's De Arte Graphica, recommends several books and authors that painters should read for ideas, including the Bible, Homer, Milton, Virgil, Spenser, and Godwin's Roman Antiquities. (6) Jonathan Richardson likewise advises that painters should "read the best books, such as Homer, Milton, Virgil, Spencer [sic], Thucydides, Livy, Plutarch, & c. but chiefly the Holy Scripture." (7) The education of a painter, Richardson avers, should be no different from that of the poet: "To paint a history, a man ought to have the main qualities of a good historian, and something more; he must yet go higher, and have the talents requisite to a good poet; the rules for the conduct of a picture being much the same with those to be observed in writing a poem ... he must be furnished with a vast stock of poetical, as well as historical learning." (8) Importantly, Richardson's insistence on common rules for poetry and painting implies that a history painting is a literary text; he does in fact later characterize painting as "a sort of writing." (9) The reading curricula recommended by Dryden and Richardson for history painters imply that they believe book illustrators should be close readers of texts.
Moreover, the influence of William Hogarth's narrative art on Hayman's book illustrations cannot be discounted. Hogarth and Hayman likely discussed theories of painting between themselves. Deborah Lambert proposes that the two men may have known each other as early as 1733, and a few years later, Hayman and Hogarth, along with Henry Fielding and Hubert Gravelot, were regulars at Old Slaughter's coffee house. (10) Lambert and Brian Allen also note that Hayman was a teacher of painting at the nearby St. Martin's Lane Academy. (11) The two artists certainly continued their relationship well into the 1740s, for of the four paintings contributed to the new Foundling Hospital in 1747, those by Hayman and Hogarth show sequential episodes from the same chapter of Exodus: Hayman's painting is Finding of Moses in the Bulrushes and Hogarth's is Moses Brought before Pharaoh's Daughter. George Vertue, moreover, recounts that Hayman and Hogarth were briefly arrested together in France during an artistic foray to sketch Calais following the Peace of Aix-la-Chappelle in 1748. (12)
Hayman's visual criticism of Milton is manifested throughout Paradise Lost, but most strikingly in his depiction of the relationship between Adam and Eve. For example, in his design for book 4 (fig. 1), Hayman captures the spirit of the earlier pastoral description of Eden, and depicts the extraordinarily ironic moment just after the couple take their repose:
Under a tuft of shade that on a green Stood whisp'ring soft, by a fresh fountain side They sat them down; and after no more toil Of their sweet gard'ning labor than suffic'd To recommend cool Zephyr, and made ease More easy, wholsome thirst and appetite More grateful, to their supper fruits they fell. (13)
The idyllic language of this scene provides a contrasting backdrop to Satan's entrance into Eden, and links this harmonious meal with the later fateful dinner. Unknown to Adam and Eve, Satan sneaks up on them soon afterward, eavesdropping on their conversation. Hayman's placement of a small fig tree, its species made apparent by the distinctive shape of its leaves, appears in front of the fallen angel. (14) This compositional feature might anticipate the artist's scene of judgment for book 10, in which these same leaves make handy clothes (fig. 2). Although Milton's Satan does not assume human form at this point (he inhabits various animals whose "shape serv'd best his end" [book 4, line 398]), Hayman anthropomorphizes him and depicts the archfiend leaning out from around the tree with a clenched fist poised just above the tip of his spear and with an expression of acute pain. Adam and Eve, however, reflect the togetherness and harmony of the prelapsarian garden: their bodies are close and crossed, mimicking the trees behind them. Only Satan breaks up the triangular concord of the scene.
Kenneth J. Knoespel revealingly refers to Milton's description of Paradise in book 4 as a "masquelike stage setting." (15) Although Hayman's neatly mannerist, portrait studio triangular arrangement of Adam and Eve beneath the tree reflects a highly constructed aesthetic, it also has profound implications for the relationship between the two because, even though Eve is slightly lower than Adam, the triangular pose with its vertex at both heads emphasizes spiritual over physical equality. That is, Eve's position suggests that her will is governed by higher faculties, in spite of Milton's later emphasis on her appetite. It recalls an earlier tradition of Bible illustration that "combat[s]," Diane K. McColley writes, "all inclination to blame Eve more than Adam for the Fall." (16) In a related essay, McColley further explains that "English Bible illustrations either place blame squarely on Adam--a practice that is androcentric, perhaps, but not antifeminine--or else represent an entirely mutual fall. And they blame it on persuasion leading to free choice of deceptive ambition, not on passion or any weakness intrinsically linked with the feminine." (17) Michael Wilding, furthermore, notes that "[t]he vision of an inegalitarian, hierarchical and absolutist Paradise" is "import[ed] from Hell" and that "[s]ince Adam and Eve may 'at last turn all to spirit' and since 'spirits when they please / Can either sex assume, or both,' any assertion of gender hierarchy is ultimately unsustainable." (18) Hayman appears to support the characterization of Adam and Eve's early relationship as mutually supportive rather than hierarchical, for the pose of each of the figures complements the other.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]
But even while supporting the triangular harmony of the scene, the feet and legs of Adam point to the left, while Eve's point to the right. Moreover, the doves in the tree at the top of the design look in different directions. As traditional symbols of marriage, the birds sustain the reading of Adam and Eve's potential separation that Hayman encodes in the design. Nonetheless, more than at any other time in Hayman's depiction of Adam and Eve, in the frontispiece for book 4, the artist shows the couple as nearly "one flesh" (book 8, line 499). But he may have meant this closeness to be ironic or at least a foreshadowing of the Fall, for Eve's pose is ambiguous. Although she may be only expressing modesty by directing her gaze away from Adam, her initial characterization of the couple's relationship leaves little room for such self-awareness....
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