Irish Art
Irish Art
Property from the Collection of Sir Michael Smurfit
Emma Hamilton as a Bacchante, wearing classical dress, pouring from a Greek vase
Lot Closed
November 23, 04:49 PM GMT
Estimate
40,000 - 60,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Property from the Collection of Sir Michael Smurfit
Robert Fagan
London 1761 - 1816 Rome
Emma Hamilton as a Bacchante, wearing classical dress, pouring from a Greek vase
oil on canvas
unframed: 96.5 by 76 cm.; 38 by 29⅞ in.;
framed: 118 by 98 cm.; 46½ by 38⅝ in.
Emma Hart married Sir William Hamilton in London in 1791 but they lived together in Naples. Emma, originally a working-class girl from the Wirral, had been the muse of George Romney, the fashionable British portrait painter. Renowned for her beauty and her classical features, she was unsurprisingly a popular model for visiting artists in Naples. French artist Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, who travelled there in 1790, painted Emma several times, including as a Bacchant (Lady Lever Gallery, Liverpool)2 and as Ariadne, commenting on ‘her great quantity of beautiful chestnut hair’. During the 1790s, Fagan had become well-known for painting British aristocratic women, and accounts record him as having painted Lady Clifford, Mrs Villiers (later Lady Clarendon), Lady Malden and Lady Webster (later Lady Holland).
In Fagan’s portrait of Emma Hamilton, she is dressed as a follower of Bacchus, the Greek God of wine and festivity. Holding a graceful pose, she gestures elegantly towards the wine she pours onto the hot, steaming coals below. Fagan paints her hair gathered by a red and gilt-thread headband, on which an ivy garland rests. Emma stands in a frontal pose with a strong and unfaltering stare. Fagan’s painting shows Emma adopting one of her so-called ‘attitudes’, a series of poses in which she played out scenes from classical works of art.3 Regularly taking on the guise of powerful women from ancient literature, her intense performances as figures such as Medea and Circe became popular with large audiences of grant tourists in Naples. The German poet and antiquarian Johann Wolfgang von Goethe visited Sir William and Emma at Palazzo Sessa in 1787, where he describes the set she created for such performances: ‘I was greatly intrigued by a chest which was standing upright. Its front had been taken off, the interior painted black and the whole set inside a splendid gilt frame. It was large enough to hold a standing human figure, and that, we were told, was exactly what it was meant for… standing against this black background in dresses of various colours, [Emma] had sometimes imitated the antique paintings of Pompeii and even more recent masterpieces’.4 On the same visit, Goethe describes a ‘secret treasure vault’, full of antiquities, from which Emma has selected a red-figure oinochoe for this pose, which dates to the fifth century BC, and a decorative bronze tripod.
There is another portrait of Emma Hamilton by Robert Fagan which shows her in the less distinguished guise of a Neapolitan peasant and is signed ‘Roma 1793’.5
1 A portrait of Anna Maria Ferri by Robert Fagan is in Tate Britain. See https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/fagan-anna-maria-ferri-the-artists-first-wife-t03249
2 Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante, 1790-2, oil on canvas, 132.5 x 105.5 cm, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool. See https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/lady-hamilton-bacchante
3 Her attitudes are depicted in drawings by the Italian artist Pietro Antonio Novelli. See https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.70321.html
4 J. W. Goethe, Italian Journey 1786-1788, translated by W. H. Auden and E. Mayer, London 1962, pp. 15-16.
5 Portrait of Lady Emma Hamilton as a Neapolitan Peasant, 1793, oil on canvas, 45 x 36 cm., private collection. See https://www.wga.hu/html_m/f/fagan/hamilton.html