The Intimate Portrait:
drawings, miniatures and pastels from
Ramsay to Lawrence
5 March – 31
May / Room 90 / Free
This exhibition explores a fascinating but relatively
unknown type of portraiture that flourished in Georgian
and Regency Britain between the 1730s and 1830s.
It features intimate portraits by Thomas Gainsborough, Joshua
Reynolds, John Downman, Richard Cosway, David Wilkie and many
others, all drawn from the collections of the National Galleries of
Scotland and the British Museum, many never exhibited before.
Portraits were displayed in public at the
Royal Academy exhibitions but behind the scenes, in private sitting
rooms, studies and bedrooms some of them served a more intimate
role. Miniatures were often worn as jewellery to keep a loved one
close; fragile pastels protected by glittering gilt frames were
displayed on walls, while drawings were framed or mounted in albums
to be shown to friends and family.
The exhibition features nearly 200 examples in
a range of materials, from pencil, chalk, watercolours and pastels
to miniatures on ivory. It includes many self-portraits as well as
intimate portraits of the artists’ families and friends. Sitters
vary from the merchant and middle classes to the aristocracy,
actors and celebrities including Lady Hamilton, and political and
literary figures such as Sir Walter Scott, the Duke of Wellington,
Robert Burns and the young Queen Victoria.
Image: Sir Thomas Lawrence, Portrait
of Mary Hamilton (detail), 1789