England's Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton by Kate Williams

seen by the customers, who would be outraged to encounter any outré women, however much they might admire their portraits. Like all actresses and courtesans, she came between nine and twelve and never later than one-thirty unless it was a Saturday, when the fashionable set was often out of town. 4 On weekday afternoons, 32 Cavendish Square was a social whirl, the galleries, according to a friend of Romney's, “filled from Top to Bottom, his Painting and Drawing room crowded with Pictures of People of the First Fashion and Fortune.” Squires and their wives came to search for suitable poses among the engravings of previous portraits, and valets brought dogs to be sketched quickly and then removed before they ran riot. In the absence of art galleries (the British Museum had a few dusty rooms of archaeological treasures, usually open by appointment), artists' studios functioned as exhibitions: people went to learn about art, meet friends, and while away an afternoon looking at paintings. Lovers arranged to bump into each other, fallen women contrived to meet their more respectable friends, and rakes prowled for new mistresses.
    All of Romney's customers probed for details about his beautiful new model. He began to exploit their curiosity by painting her in modern dress and by dropping hints about her past. Emma Hart in Morning Dress, one of her personal favorites, shows her in a stylish black velvet dress with a large pink silk petticoat, a white scarf, and a luscious velvet bow around her neck. Her chestnut curls are topped with a huge-brimmed black hat that flatters her translucent skin and deep dark eyes. In Emma Hart Reading the Newspaper, she wears a similarly fashionable outfit and her eyes are glued to a gripping story. Respectable ladies did not officially read newspapers and certainly not the eye-popping scandal rags. The joke was clear: the tabloid celebrity reads about herself. In Emma Hart in a Straw Hat, she peeps coyly from under her large floppy sun hat. In these portraits, theviewer's position is slightly above her, her pose is submissive, and unlike in Circe or Sensibility, she looks up at her viewers. Romney also painted her with elegant simplicity as Ariadne, in a turban, in a low-cut gypsy outfit, and as Thetis, slave-girl lover of Achilles.
    The World newspaper praised Romney for his "tender, bewitching touch" in his portraits of Emma and declared them "full of captivation." Romney's work expresses his profound feelings for Emma, his fascination with her beauty, and his delight in her unpretentious personality. Unlike the frail women Thomas Gainsborough captured with feathery delicacy, Romney's sturdily energetic Emma is full of life and eager to laugh, even at herself. Increasingly, the paintings were private jokes on wild Amy Lyon's endeavors to play the virtuous housewife of Paddington Green. Emma Hart as a Magdalen is the definitive satire on Greville's assiduous efforts to form her into a penitent prostitute: swathed in Magdalen robes, she kneels in praying position, her covered head upturned for forgiveness. No other painter had Romney's gift for humor. His rival, Reynolds, knew how to commit gravitas to canvas but struggled to communicate joie de vivre. Ultimately, the president of the Royal Academy preferred the ideal to the real, and Emma was simply too earthy for him: a sexy, down-to-earth girl with a wicked sense of humor.
    The Spinstress is Romney's most teasing version of her, now on show at Kenwood House, Hampstead. Once more positioned below the viewer's line of vision, Emma slyly peeps over her shoulder. Her white dress is skintight, enticingly pulled around her bosom. Emma's beguiling smile hints at the absurdity of her pose, dangling a suggestively shaped spindle while a white hen pecks around her feet. It is all a joke: the costume is much too impractical for work, and she is far too exotic to be a mundane farm girl. The previous artist at number 32, Francis Cotes, had painted ladies