Object Type
This sketchbook contains studies of landscapes, towns and figures, notes on travels in France and on the manufacture of floor-cloth (Hayward's business). This portable sketchbook has been used to sketch rapidly from nature. J.S. Hayward (1778-1822) did not feel bound by artistic conventions in his composition, but has worked freely from what he can see, using the paper as a palette to test his colours.

People
The son of a floor-cloth manufacturer, Hayward took on his father's business. He was a friend of the watercolourist Joshua Cristall (1768-1847), who first worked at the calico printing works at Old Ford in London. The two young men collaborated on painting a panorama of Constantinople when Cristall came to London to establish himself as a professional artist. Hayward remained an amateur, but he exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1798 to 1816 and was Secretary of The Sketching Society, to which he was elected in 1803. He made sketching trips around Britain and to France and Italy.

The Sketching Society
The Sketching Society was founded in London in 1799 by a group of young artists that included Thomas Girtin (1775-1802). The Society's sketches were quite different from the realistic watercolours to be seen in Hayward's sketchbook. Their sketches were inspired by the conviction that human subjects and events, whether classical, biblical or historical, were more powerful subjects for art than the everyday world of ordinary nature. They aimed to stimulate their imaginative faculties by sketching original designs based on the 'poetick passages' from literature presented to them at each meeting.