In September 1795, George Romney began this portrait, one of his last and greatest, to commemorate the close friendship between the four sitters. It shows John Flaxman working on a monumental bust of the poet William Hayley with help from his apprentice, Thomas Alphonso Hayley, the poet’s illegitimate son. To the far left is a self-portrait of Romney hiding behind his cloak and clutching a palette. The painting proved to be a source of contention between Romney and Hayley. Thomas died young in 1800, and Hayley wanted the painting to remember his son, claiming "it was painted explicitly for me!" The ailing Romney was willing to bequeath it to Hayley but demanded Hayley in turn bequeath it to his friend Thomas Greene. The situation was never resolved and, what had been conceived as a memorial of friendship, ultimately caused a painful dispute between the two during Romney’s last years.

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   George Romney painted this magnificent full-length portrait as a gesture of friendship to all three figures, and included a charming self-portrait in the top left corner, smiling through spectacles. The poet and biographer William Hayley, who stands to the left of center, was a determined cultivator of artists, poets, and rich and famous men. He had earlier addressed a rambling Epistle on Painting (1778) to Romney. Hayley's son Thomas (Tom) Alphonso, who has his back to us, was illegitimate but cherished, the product of an affair with Miss Betts, the daughter of Hayley's former nursemaid. Tom showed talent as an artist and became Romney's pupil-Hayley called him "young Phideas" to the neoclassical sculptor Flaxman's "Dear Praxiteles." Like Hayley, Flaxman enjoyed the friendship of the more senior Romney, but also his patronage.

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