Portrait of Lady Hamilton (Emma Hart)

Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (called Goethe-Tischbein)

1751 Haina – 1829 Eutin

Pen and brown ink. Sheet size: 27 x 21.5 cm. Inscribed in pencil at top Nr. 13 and on verso K 13 in pen and ink.

Provenance: The dukes of Oldenburg (Tischbein estate, bearing the collector’s stamp)

Preparatory sketch for the head of Andromache in Tischbein’s Hector taking leave of Andromache of 1812 (Landesmuseum Oldenbourg).

Hector, the war hero, takes leave of his grieving wife who stands to his right. His son Astyanax is held by a nurse to whom he fearfully turns as he is asked to bid farewell to his father, who stands in front of him wearing full armour and holding his arms outstretched. “It is at any rate evident that the wife bidding farewell in this picture has the facial features and the curly brown hair of Lady Hamilton and that she furthermore wears her white dress in the Greek style and has a wide shawl placed on her head” (1).

Our drawing comes from the collection of the dukes of Oldenbourg, who had already placed the commission for this subject from Homer’s Iliad with Tischbein in 1809.

The commission for an earlier, now lost version of the subject, which can be dated to around 1788 had been given to Tischbein by Prince Christian August von Waldeck in Arolsen. It was through the prince that Tischbein and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had met Lady Hamilton in Naples in the previous year (1787). Goethe admired Lady Hamilton’s much-praised “attitudes”, a cross between postures, dance and acting, and he based the figure of Luciane in his Wahlverwandschaften (Elective Affinities) (1808) on her.

Also recorded is a short description of the picture by Tischbein, who mentions that Emma Hart sat for the figure of Andromache in this painting.

“The best head study I drew of her was a sketch for a picture in which Andromache asks her husband Hector to spare himself for her sake and that of her child ... I executed Andromache’s head very diligently after Lady Hamilton and took great care to capture the pleading expression; and I accurately followed the shape of her face, and faithfully that of her mouth, which compares in beauty to the antique models.” (2).

Tischbein remained in Naples and moved into lodgings neighbouring the Hamilton residence. In addition to his work on a catalogue and pictorial record of William Hamilton’s notable collection of antique vases, Tischbein also drew and painted Lady Hamilton. The group of preparatory drawings to which our sheet belongs served Tischbein as models for female figures even for his painting Hector taking leave of Andromache of 1812. In his memoirs he reports that he had drawn Lady Hamilton “in a variety of poses” (3).

Tischbein departed from Naples in 1799. With him, he took “... also an idealised female type based on his studies of Lady Hamilton, which he adhered to even in his late work” (4).
The question as to whether our drawing is the preparatory drawing executed in Naples and intended for the first version of the painting, or whether it is based on his recollection of the idealised figure of Lady Hamilton remains unanswered. All the same, our drawing our drawing tells a fascinating story of the indelible impression this woman must have left on our artist.

(1) Köhn, p. 33.
(2) Köhn, p. 30.
(3) Tischbein, p. 246.
(4) Naumer, p. 143.

Bought by a museum, Italy.