13. Thomas Cheesman (1760-after 1834)
after George Romney (1734-1802)
The Seamstress

(click on image to print)
Cheesman, The Seamstress

The Seamstress

Stipple engraving printed in colors, ca. 1787, 385 x 299 mm., Horne 48. A fine impression, though probably printed a bit later, on wove paper with large margins; a few small thin spots. Ostensibly a simple, sentimental image, fit to hang modestly on the wall of a bedroom or library, but viewers of the time would have known that it was a portrait of Romney’s model, Emma, in a few years to be known as Lady Hamilton. Emma, born Amy Lyon, began her career, at the age of twelve, as a lady’s maid. She graduated from this, at age fifteen, to become a hostess and entertainer at an extended stag party, where she is reported to have danced naked on the dining room table. After having a child by her employer, she then became the mistress of one of his friends, The Honorable Charles Greville who, wanting a portrait of her, introduced her to Romney. Through the years, Romney painted many portraits of her in many different guises, and through those portraits she herself became known and accepted in society. Needless to say, she was beautiful. There is just too much in her life to be set down here, but eventually she married the elderly antiquarian Sir William Hamilton (becoming Lady Hamilton), and later became the mistress of Admiral Lord Nelson. And we doubt the concept of upward social mobility in eighteenth-century Britain?