'A Midsummer Night's Dream', Act II, Scene 2, Titania Reposing with Her Indian Votaries

George Romney returned repeatedly to Shakespeare for subject matter, and A Midsummer Night's Dream provided him with a particularly rich vein of theatrical fantasy. This canvas depicting Titania reposing with her Indian votaries, held at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, belongs to the tradition of Shakespearean painting that flourished in Britain from the 1760s onward, driven by the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery project and a broader cultural enthusiasm for visualising theatrical literature. Titania's relationship with her Indian changeling boy — and the attendant votaries who accompany her in the play — offered painters an opportunity to combine classical figure grouping with oriental fantasy in a way that flattered the audience's sense of British cultural superiority while genuinely exploring the play's themes of desire, possession, and enchantment. Romney's version focuses on the resting queen and her attendants, a subject that allowed him to paint figures in the relaxed, ungarded poses he favoured over the frozen theatrical gestures of academic history painting.

Romney's Shakespearean subjects are among his most freely painted works, where the narrative permission of literary illustration allowed him to loosen the conventions governing portraiture. The figure grouping is arranged for visual harmony rather than dramatic clarity, with the reclining Titania forming a horizontal axis around which the standing and seated votaries are arranged. The paint is applied with greater freedom than in commissioned portraits.