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Cover page for Lady Hamilton's Attitudes

Maker

(artist)
1758-1835

(engraver)
ca. 1752-1824 (Life dates)

Title

Cover page for Lady Hamilton's Attitudes

Medium

medium : material : ink & support : material : paper

Dimensions

Height: 27.6 cm
Width: 22.4 cm

Accession Number

G.1990.WL.3366.1

Mode of Acquisition

Witt Library, transfer, 1990

Credit

The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)

Copyright

Work in the public domain

Location

Not currently on display

Keywords










Label Text

Cover page for 'Drawings at Naples'. Emma, Lady Hamilton, performed her classically-inspired 'attitudes' from 1787 to audiences of invited guests in Naples, where her husband Sir William was British Envoy. She based her poses on scenes from Greek vase paintings.

In 1794 the attitudes were the subject of a set of prints by Tommaso Piroli. Owing to the popularity of Neoclassical fashions, the images soon became widespread. Subsequent editions were published throughout the nineteenth century. Piroli’s prints (and implicitly Lady Hamilton, by then resident back in London) were also the subject of satire. In 1807, they were mocked by printmaker James Gillray in a series which cast the renowned beauty as an ungainly frump.

Provenance

Information not yet known or updated

Literature

González, Javier Novo, 'Raising Friedrich Rehberg: the artist behind Cain: at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum' in 'B’09 : Buletina = Boletín = Bulletin', no. 5 (2010), Bilbao: Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, pp. 139-217.
pp. 13-14
re: attribution

Contogouris, Ersy, "Emma Hamilton, a Model of Agency in Late Eighteenth-Century Europe", PhD dissertation, Montréal: Département d’histoire de l’art et d’études cinématographiques, Université de Montréal, 2014.
Information regarding editions of the work can be found on pages 115-117.

Inscriptions

Inscription: inscription : printed : upper centre image & recto : : DRAWINGS / Faithfully copied from Nature / AT NAPLES / and with permission dedicated //

Inscription: inscription : printed : middle centre image (in frame?) & recto : : E H //

Inscription: inscription : printed : lower centre image & recto : : To the Right Honourable / SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON / His Britannic Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary / at the Court of Naples. / By his most humble Servant / FREDERICK REHBERG. / Historical Painter in his Prussian Majesty's Service at Rome / MDCCXCIV. //

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