A drawing depicting two women dancing. Both women wear flowing dresses with scarves tying back their hair. The woman on the right, dressed in yellow, steps away from the viewer as her partner, dressed in white, steps forward, passing under the arch formed by their joined hands. This subject has traditionally been identified as Emma, Lady Hamilton, dancing the Tarantella. However, other sources suggest that it may represent Elizabeth and Caroline Upton, eldest daughters of Clotworthy Upton, 1st Baron Templetown.

The drawing is a work of the amateur draughtsman William Lock the Younger (1767–1847), sometimes styled “of Norbury” after his family seat at Norbury Park. His father, also called William Lock, was an important art collector and patron. Lock the Younger was a friend and pupil of the painter Henry Fuseli, on whose advice he travelled to Italy to further his artistic development, living in Rome from autumn 1789 until at least the end of 1792. A former child prodigy, Lock enjoyed considerable success as a draughtsman, producing pen-and-ink and pencil sketches. However, he struggled to master the art of painting. Able to live comfortably off his inherited wealth, he never pursued a career as a professional artist, his friend Fuseli commenting that “it was a misfortune to Art that [Lock] was born in a situation not to be obliged to paint”.

Another version of this drawing is in the British Museum (1906,0719.4). Although exactly the same size as the present sketch, it is rendered in pen and ink, whereas this drawing is executed in pencil with watercolour. Mariano Bovi used one of these drawings as the model for a stipple engraving published under the title ‘The Two Sisters’ on 2 May 1796. Another version of the print featured a quote from Milton: ‘Grace is in all their steps’. It was not uncommon in this period for portraits of elite women to be published as ‘fancy’ pictures with generic titles.

The subject of this drawing is traditionally been identified as Emma, Lady Hamilton (née Amy Lyon, 1765–1815), dancing the Tarantella. A copy of Bovi’s print, annotated in pencil with the words ‘Lady Hamilton’, was published in 1905 in Walter Sydney Sichel’s book, 'Emma, Lady Hamilton' (opp. p. 109). Sichel’s caption described the print as “Lady Hamilton dancing the Tarantella at Naples.” The British Museum acquired their version of the drawing the following year. On its accession, it was described as “two studies of Lady Hamilton dancing the tarantella combined in a group”, implying that Emma was the model for both figures. When the present drawing in the early twenty-first century, it was said to represent Emma (on the right) dancing with an unidentified woman (on the left).

The Tarantella was an Italian folk dance, characterised by light, quick steps. In eighteenth century, it attracted attention from wealthy scholars and aristocrats, who believed the dance to be a relic of the classical world, echoing in particular the erotic, wine-fuelled excesses of ancient Dionysian cults. Drawing on this elite fascination with the dance, Emma, Lady Hamilton, began staging performances of the tarantella at the court of Naples, where her husband – Sir William Hamilton, a noted collector of classical antiquities – was the British Ambassador. Emma had a gift for performance, having already garnered international acclaim for her ‘Attitudes’. These were a series of static poses and transitional movements, through which she conjured up characters and scenes from ancient history, mythology and art. Like the ‘Attitudes’, Emma’s performances of the tarantella entranced audiences because they seemed to bring the ancient world vividly back to life. The version of the dance that Emma performed was carefully choreographed and stylised, transforming rural tradition into a refined and elevated spectacle suitable for an aristocratic audience, while nevertheless retaining heady traces of exoticism and sensuality.

William Lock the Younger moved in the same social and artistic circles as the Hamiltons. Both Sir William and Emma visited his father at Norbury Park in 1791. However, since Lock the Younger was resident in Italy at the time, he cannot have met the couple on that occasion. It is possible that he visited them in Naples at some point or perhaps he produced this sketch when the Hamiltons passed through Rome in late 1791.

There is, however, another possibility: the drawing may not represent Emma at all. In her book, 'The Locks of Norbury' (1940), Vittoria Colonna Caetani, Duchess of Sermoneta, suggested that the British Museum drawing depicted Elizabeth (1775–1844) and Caroline Upton (1778–1863), the daughters of Clotworthy Upton, 1st Baron Templetown. As evidence for this claim, Caetani cites a letter from the writer Fanny Burney to her friend Georgina Mary Ann Waddington. Dated June 1797, this letter included the question: “Have you seen Mr. William’s beautiful sketch of Lady Templetown’s two eldest daughters?”. Here “Mr William” is a reference to William Lock the Younger. The Burneys, the Uptons, and the Locks were very close and frequently socialised together.