Emma, Lady Hamilton, as a Bacchante

Oval miniature in watercolour on ivory in an oval gilt metal locket, enclosed in a brown/red leather case lined with red velvet. It is based on a painting by the famous French female artist, Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun, who visited the Hamiltons at Naples and painted her there, and it records Emma in one of the roles of her celebrated 'attitudes', as a Bacchante - a follower of Bacchus god of wine - with vine leaves in her loosened hair. She is shown from behind looking back over her bare left shoulder, her body swathed round in a classical style white robe. The signature 'Dun' appears in the woodland background to the left of her head. The reverse of the frame is glazed, bearing the initials 'EH' in a white rectangle surrounded by a plaited infill of the sitter's auburn hair. The initials themselves are also worked in hair. While this item has, for over a century, usually been attributed to the Dublin miniaturist John Dunn (fl.1801-41) the signature and other comparisons more probably suggest it is by Nicolas-Francois Dun (1764-1832), a French/ Flemish artist working mainly in Naples from at least as early as around 1790. Although the head and pose relate to Lebrun's two oil portraits of Emma as a Bacchante (1790-91), it is probably otherwise wholly from life, as the inclusion of her hair suggests, and because Dun painted other figures of the Neapolitan court including Queen Maria Carolina, with whom Emma was closely connected.

Object Details

ID: MNT0042
Collection: Fine art
Type: Miniature
Display location: Not on display
Creator: Dunn, John; Brun, Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Dun, Nicolas-Francois
Date made: circa 1798-1800
Exhibition: Seduction and Celebrity: The Spectacular Life of Emma Hamilton
People: Hamilton, Emma
Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Ingram Collection
Measurements: Overall: 86 x 68 x 3 mm
Parts: Emma, Lady Hamilton, as a Bacchante