Apollo Book Competition
Last Friday we offered you 'A Genius for Failure: The Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon' by Paul O'Keeffe (The Bodley Head; £25), reviewed in the current issue of Apollo by Julian Treuherz. Intensity, struggle and near-comic inability to succeed encapsulate Haydon's career. Thirty years before his death his huge, iconic paintings made him the toast of 19th-century London, drawing paying crowds to the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly for months. However, his attempt to repeat such success three months before his death was to destroy him: barely a soul turned up, leaving the desperate painter alone, humiliated and facing financial ruin.
We asked you:
What is the title of the play written by John Wells about Benjamin Robert Haydon?
Answer: The Immortal Haydon
Congratulations to Treve Rosoman, winner of this competition, drawn at random from the hundreds of correct answers that received.
This week our competition prize is 'Mrs. Delany & Her Circle' (Yale; £40), the catalogue to the current exhibition at the Soane Museum, London, reviewed in the current issue of Apollo. At the age of 72, Mary Delany embarked on a series of nearly 1,000 botanical collages which would prove to be the crowning achievement of her rich creative life. Although best known for these works, Mrs Delany was also an amateur artist, woman of fashion, and commentator on life and society in 18th-century England and Ireland. This superb survey illustrates the full range of Mrs Delany's creative endeavours. Our reviewer, Timothy Wilcox, wrote, '"Mrs Delany and her Circle" is a model of inter-disciplinary collaboration. In future, she will be known not by the still dubious epithet of "amateur", but as a sublime example of another 18th-century phenomenon, the virtuoso.'
For your chance to win, simply answer the following question:
Which museum houses the botanical collages of Mrs Delany?
Email your answers to offers@apollomag.com using 'Delany' as the subject of your email. Only answers received before midday on 26th February will be entered into the competition draw.
Good luck!
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