Portrait of Emma, Lady Hamilton by Domenico Pellegrini

Domenico Pellegrini
1759–1840 | Italian

Portrait of Emma, Lady Hamilton

Signed and dated “Do Pellegrini / 1791” center right
Oil on canvas

Few women have risen so far, captivated so many and become so intimately connected to history as Emma, Lady Hamilton. Born into poverty, she became an artist’s muse, an international celebrity and the great love of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, Britain’s foremost naval hero. Domenico Pellegrini painted this remarkable lifetime portrait in 1791, the year Emma married Sir William Hamilton and formally entered the highest ranks of European society. Unlike the mythological and theatrical guises that shaped so many of her portraits, Pellegrini presents Emma as herself at this defining moment in her life.

Emma turns toward the viewer with her dog gathered closely in her lap. Her direct gaze, loosely dressed hair and affectionate embrace create an unusually informal likeness. The white collar and warm red dress illuminate her face against the dark background, while Pellegrini’s controlled handling preserves the softness of her expression. Rather than casting Emma as Circe, Cassandra, Ariadne or a Bacchante, as other leading artists did, Pellegrini concentrates on her character and physical presence.

Born Amy Lyon, the daughter of a Cheshire blacksmith, Emma achieved one of the most extraordinary social ascents of her era. By 1782 she had become the muse of George Romney, who repeatedly portrayed her in literary, religious and mythological roles. She traveled to Naples in 1786 and entered the household of Sir William Hamilton, Britain’s envoy extraordinary to the court of Naples and an influential collector of classical antiquities. There, Emma developed her celebrated “Attitudes,” performances in which drapery, gesture and rapidly changing expressions evoked figures from ancient sculpture, painted vases, mythology and literature. These performances established her as an international celebrity and brought her into the circle of Queen Maria Carolina of Naples.

Emma and Sir William married in London on September 6, 1791. Pellegrini’s dated inscription places this portrait at the precise moment when the former Amy Lyon became Lady Hamilton. Another portrait from the same year, Angelica Kauffmann’s preparatory study for Emma Hamilton as the Comic Muse, is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Yet that work and the celebrated compositions by Romney and Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun continue the allegorical tradition that Pellegrini set aside here.

Emma was already a global sensation when she met Horatio Nelson in Naples in 1793. Their relationship deepened following Nelson’s victory at the Battle of the Nile in 1798, when the wounded admiral returned to the Hamilton household. Their subsequent love affair became inseparable from Nelson’s public legend. After his death at Trafalgar in 1805, it became public that his last appeal to the nation was to provide for Emma and their daughter, Horatia, a request the government did not fulfill.

Dated 1791

Canvas: 30" high x 24 3/4" wide (76.20 x 62.87 cm)

Frame: 37" high x 32" wide x 3" deep (93.98 x 81.28 x 7.62 cm)

Provenance:
Presumably the collection of Sir William Hamilton
Possibly Christie’s, London, The Property of Sir William Hamilton, K.B., and the Rt. Hon. Lord Viscount Nelson, June 6–8, 1809, lot 75, as A Portrait of Lady Hamilton
Mrs. Gage, Ballinacree House, Ballymoney, Ireland
Roland Balay
Sotheby’s, London, June 19, 1957, lot 92
Sotheby’s, London, November 13, 1996, lot 62, where acquired by the prior owners

Literature:
Benezit. Dictionary of Artists. Vol. 10, 2006, p. 1099
Waterhouse, Ellis. The Dictionary of British 18th Century Painters. 1981, p. 272
Walker, Richard. The Nelson Portraits. 1998, illustrated p. xv
Ingamells, John. Mid-Georgian Portraits. 2004, p. 230
Pavanello, Giuseppe. Domenico Pellegrini 1759–1840: Un Pittore Veneto Nelle Capitali d’Europa. 2012, pp. 17 and 113, note 48, illustrated fig. 5