0208aAriadne

0208aAriadneRomney

A pensive young woman in a white dress and straw hat sits by the sea, hands clasped, gazing downwards

Emma Hart Hamilton was one of the most painted women of her age. The fact that she was the young bride of Sir William Hamilton, one of the age’s most important diplomats, contributed much to this. But, her physical beauty attracted the attention of painters, especially George Romney. Her notorious affair with Horatio Lord Nelson, the victor of Napoleon’s fleet at Trafalgar, drew the attention of satirists and cartoonists, as well.

Here Romney has placed Lady Hamilton in a grotto, some think as Ariadne where she pines for the departing Theseus. [Macfarlane thinks the distant shipis the clincher: this is Ariadne abandoned by her departing Theseus.]

The museum label states that the attribution of title (i.e. the association with Ariadne) is a late 19th-Century invention. “There is no evidence that she ever sat to Romney as Ariadne. Although it is clearly Emma, it was probably painted just after her departure for Naples in 1786, seven years before she and Nelson first met there. Romney deeply missed Emma, his favorite model, and never sold it.”