(1699 - 1757), poet, 2nd s. of Robert Dyer, solicitor of Aberglasney, Carm.; studied law with his fa. 1716 - 20; London 1720, studied painting under Jn. Richardson; m. 1738 Sarah Ensor; ord. 1741; FSA 1741; rect. of Catthorpe, Leics. 1742 - 51, of Belchford and Coningsby, Lincs, 1751, and of Kirkby, Lincs, 1755.
1724 - 5 [dep. Plymouth Apr.] Leghorn, Rome, Tivoli, Florence, Naples [Aberglasney, autumn 1725]
Having studied as a painter for some years under Jonathan Richardson in London, and become a co-founder of the Roman Club in London in 1723, John Dyer went to Italy in 1724, sailing from Plymouth to Leghorn.1 He went on to Rome where he found the people 'very reserved and deceitful, they seldom appear together but under disguises and in holy pageantries', he told his brother; such displays also prompted him to write, 'tis strange what havoc their religion makes on their minds,everything they do is capricious and absurd, all things take a tincture of their religion. So reason and plain principles of nature are neglected among them'. To a friend he confessed that on many evenings he 'made resolutions to return to England, which the next morning has diverted on the Capitol or the Avertine', and the pleasures of antiquity grew quickly on him. His study of statues and bas-reliefs led him to understand why 'N. Poussin was so fond of them, and called even Rafael an ass to the ancients', and he was able to buy a cast of the Dancing Maidens from the Borghese. He thought the Pantheon 'the noblest building, perhaps, that ever was', and his poetic sensibility discovered 'a certain charm that follows the sweep of time, and I can't help thinking the triumphal arches more beautiful now than ever they were'. Dyer's itinerary is not clear, but he sketched in Tivoli, copied Correggio's Madonna adoring the Christ Child in the Uffizi in Florence (his copy now in a priv. coll.), and an entry in one of his private journals records a 'narrow escape at Baiae, from some banditti who harboured in the ruins there', indicating a visit to Naples. One of his poems is entitled Written at Ocriculum, in Italy, 1725, (Otricoli, near Narni in Umbria). At the end of his stay he wrote to his mother that 'I have gathered, I thank God, enough of knowledge in painting to live well in the busiest part of the world, if I should happen to prefer it to retirement'. He was back in Wales by the winter of 1725. In 1740 Dyer published his poem The Ruins of Rome ('Rent palaces, crush'd columns, rifled moles, / Fanes roll'd on fanes, and tombs on bury'd tombs').
1. See B. Humfrey, John Dyer, [1980], 23, 27 - 44. L. Lippincott, Selling Art in Georgian London, 19 - 22. R.M. Williams, Poet Painter and Parson ... John Dyer, [1956], 53 - 63.
