A print after a painting of Emma Hart, by George Romney. This dramatic sketch shows Emma posing as Miranda, from Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’. She looks upwards, lips parted, in an expression of concern and pleading as she urges her father to calm the tempestuous seas. Romney’s painting of the dramatic moment between Prospero and Miranda (in act 1, scene 2), was his first contribution to Alderman John Boydell’s celebrated Shakespeare Gallery. The largest and most ambitious painting he ever completed, it was destroyed in the 1950s and only a few heavily restored fragments now survive. There are however several sketches of Emma as Miranda, for which she sat before her departure for Naples in March 1786.

Emma met Romney in 1782, when she was about 16, through her ‘protector’ Charles Greville. Romney was captivated by her beauty and she became his favourite model until Greville passed her on to the protection of his uncle, Sir William Hamilton, the British ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples. They married in 1791, but in 1799 she also became the lover of Admiral Horatio Nelson in an affair that has become legendary.

Caroline Watson engraved works by Reynolds and Romney and was engraver to Queen Caroline. The print is inscribed, ‘Engraved by Caroline Watson 14 Aug 1809, (engraver to Her Majesty) from the original Picture’. While this edition of the print is just inscribed ‘Miranda’ a later one bears the title ‘Lady Hamilton as Miranda’.