drawing
- Museum number
- 1973,1208.85.1-65
- Description
-
Sketchbook in a BM binding (?) with subjects including domestic groups, drawn in Rome, Naples and Dresden
- Production date
- 1791-1822
- Curator's comments
- Text from Ian Jenkins and Kim Sloan, 'Vases and Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and his Collection', BM 1996, cat.161[referring to 1973,1208.85.6-7 particularly]:
The Huguenot history painter William Artaud arrived in Rome as a Royal Academy travelling scholar in January 1796. Shortly afterwards, on hearing of the French advance through northern Italy, he left for Naples with a number of other artists. In May he reported to his father:
"The environs at Naples are truly Classic Ground, I have visited Lake Avernus, have been in the Elysian Fields, in the Baths of Nero, & in the Tomb of Virgil. I have also descended upwards of 100' into the Crater of Vesuvius, & saw the astonishing effects of the destruction of the Village of Torre del Greco. ... I have been at Herculaneum & Pompeii & the Museum at Portici, & saw Lady Hamilton's attitudes, & made several drawings from the King of Naples' Collection at Capo de Monte". [Sewter, p. 115]
Lady Hamilton had given performances of her attitudes in London and several cities in Europe in 1791 and had been presenting them in Naples for ten years when Artaud arrived in the city; by then, they were as much a part of the sights of Naples as the wonders of nature and antiquity. The quick sketches he made of Lady Hamilton in several attitudes are not labelled, but they are readily recognisable from records by other artists. They are quite different in character from other drawings in the sketchbook, such as his pen and ink sketches for historical compositions or the more careful pencil and wash studies he made three years later of the daughters of British families in Dresden, acting out their own parlour versions of the 'attitudes'.
Artaud's four or five pages of sketches of Emma were made very quickly and are very faint and difficult to decipher, but, like the drawings by Novelli, they emphasise the fact that the attitudes were a series of movements rather than static poses. Artaud's depictions, clearly showing Emma's long hair and swirling shawl, include Medea, a penitent Magdalen, the Muse of dance and a bacchante, all recognisable to him from their echoes of figures in history paintings he had painted himself or seen by other artists in Britain and Rome.
For Artaud, see A.C. Sewter, "The life, work and letters of William Artaud 1763-1823", unpublished MA thesis, University of Manchester, 1951; also Kim Sloan, "William Artaud: history painter and 'violent democrat'", Burlington Magazine, February 1995, pp.76-85.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1999/2000 Nov-Feb, Newcastle, Laing AG, Art Treasure of North
- Acquisition date
- 1973
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1973,1208.85.1-65
