Emma Hart (1765–1815), as Miranda

Among George Romney's many portrayals of Emma Hart, this 1785 canvas depicting her as Miranda from Shakespeare's The Tempest is one of the earliest and most psychologically complex. Miranda — the young woman raised in isolation on an enchanted island, seeing other humans for the first time — offered Romney a role that combined innocence, wonder, and latent power in a way that suited Emma Hart's remarkable expressive range. Romney met Emma around 1782, when she was the mistress of his friend Charles Greville, and began his obsessive series of portraits that would continue until his withdrawal from London in 1799. This early work, now at Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal, predates Emma's transformation into Lady Hamilton and captures her as a young woman of extraordinary presence before the full elaboration of her public persona. The Shakespearean frame allowed Romney to explore Emma's character through a literary persona, a creative strategy he would develop extensively in the mythological role-paintings that followed.

The 1785 date places this canvas in Romney's mature period, when his handling had achieved the fluid, luminous quality his best work displays. The face is painted with particular sensitivity, capturing something of the open, wondering quality the role demanded. Romney's background treatment is characteristically atmospheric, with landscape elements dissolved into soft suggestion rather than precise description.