George Romney is best known for his portraits of Emma Hart. He was smitten by her beauty and over a four-year period, he sketched her hundreds of times.
Even after she left England for Naples, Romney remained obsessed with her, painting her from memory. She was his muse but never his mistress.
She was born Amy Lyon, but she later called herself “Emma Hart.” The daughter of a blacksmith, she worked at what was likely a brothel. At 16, she was illiterate and pregnant.
But that’s when the Hon. Charles Greville, who moved her, her baby and her mother into his villa, took her up. She was his teenaged mistress. And he was the one who commissioned this portrait.
Dutch painters had been painting ladies at spinning wheels. There was often a caged bird included in the scenery, which was an allusion to the woman’s virtue. In this portrait, Emma’s bird may have flown. The only bird present is a hen at her feet.
