Seymour Haden
English, 1818-1910
Person TypeIndividual
BiographySir Francis Seymour Haden,1818–1910, was an English surgeon, best known as an etcher. He was born in London, his father, Charles Thomas Haden, being a well-known doctor and lover of music. He was educated at Derby School, Christ's Hospital, and University College, London, and also studied at the Sorbonne, Paris, where he took his degree in 1840. He was admitted as a member of the College of Surgeons in London in 1842. Haden attended no art school and had no art teachers, but between 1845 and 1848 he studied portfolios of prints belonging to a second-hand dealer named Love, who had a shop in Bunhill Row, the old Quaker quarter of London. Arranging the prints in chronological order, he studied the works of the great original engravers. Haden followed the art of original etching with such vigour that he became not only the foremost British exponent of that art but brought about its revival in England. He preferred to work directly onto the plate in front of the subject. During later years also Haden began to practise mezzotint engraving, with a measure of the same success that he had already achieved in pure etching and in dry-point.