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The parable of the Good Samaritan is unique to the Gospel of St. Luke (Luke 10:30–37) and was told by Jesus in response to the question: “And who is my neighbor?” Francis Hayman depicts the Good Samaritan tending to the wounds of a stranger on the road to Jericho while a priest and a Levite pass him by. William Wrightson, a member of Parliament, commissioned it as an altarpiece for a new chapel at Cusworth Hall, his house near Doncaster then being extensively remodeled. Wrightson was consequently a very unusual patron since devotional pictures were rare in Britain after the Protestant Reformation and, unlike Italy or France, few churches and chapels in Britain were adorned with altarpieces. Hayman was Wrightson’s natural choice because by 1750 he had established himself as the leading history painter in Britain and was defiantly British, although strongly influenced by the latest French painting.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016

Hayman's Good Samaritan was commissioned by William Wrightson, MP, as the altarpiece of his private chapel at Cusworth Hall in Yorkshire. The subject is Jesus's parable of the Good Samaritan taken from Luke 10: 25-37 in which a traveler is set upon by robbers, left for dead, and ignored by a passing priest and a Levite. A Samaritan takes pity on him and treats his wounds. Hogarth had painted a large canvas of the same subject for St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London in 1737 (the print is shown nearby), and the two compositions are closely related. Hayman's reputation as a history painter was high in the early 1750s, and he was able to charge £26 5s. for the altarpiece. This, however, is one of his few Biblical subjects, an indication of the lack of demand for religious painting in Georgian Britain.

Gallery label for Connections (Yale Center for British Art, 2011-05-26 - 2011-09-11)