FDA-D.443-2010

FDA-D.443-2010

drawing

Study of a Man's Head, for 'The Tempest' [recto]; Nude Study [verso]
Whiteley

assigned by cataloguer
collection

The model for this extraordinary and powerful study was almost certainly Romney's friend the poet William Hayley (1745-1820). Portraits of Hayley by Henry Howard (National Portrait Gallery) and by Romney himself show the same slightly gaunt face, deep-set eyes and distinctive Roman nose. The likeness becomes all the more apparent if the Medusa-like hair is excluded from the picture. It does appear that the drawing was made in two stages (the first without the long hair), and is related to two Shakespearian subjects on which Romney was working in the late 1780s.
The inscription on the back of the sheet refers to 'The Tempest' one of Romney's most amibitious paintings and his first contribution to Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall. Romney and Hayley were guests at John and Josiah Boydell's dinner party in November 1786, when the Shakespeare Gallery project was conceived. The idea was to assemble a collection of large-scale oil paintings of subjects from Shakespeare's plays by leading British artists of the day. These were to be exhibited in the spacious first floor galleries, while engravings after the paintings were to be displayed and sold downstairs. The Gallery opened in 1789 and Romney's colossal 'Tepmest' (measuring 10 by 15 feet) was delivered a year later. The picture is now only known from the Boydell engraving by Benjamin Smith and from a small number of fragments. The Eton 'Head' appears to be an early idea for one of the foreground shipwrecked sailors in the 'Tempest', probably the man to the right of the main foreground group. The same head (still without the added hair) was drawn again by Romney, from a slightly different angle, in graphite and black chalk; that drawing is now in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC. Alex Kidson describes the long and tortured history of the painter's association with the Shakespeare Gallery and the 'idealistic ardour that had gripped [him] at the outset of the scheme and that runs like an electirc current in his sketches for the project'.
When the drawing is considered with the long tresses of hair added, it can be firmly linked with the artist's drawing 'A Fiend', now in the Courtauld Institute collection. The fiend is an evil spirit conjured up by Margery Jourdain and Bolingbroke in Shakespeare's King Henry VI, Part 2, Act 1, scene iv. Further sketches for the same Shakespearian fiend, also apparently based on Hayley's likeness, are in the Fitzwilliam and the Folger Shakespeare Library. Romney was working on this subject for the Shakespeare Gallery in 1788-89, although his painting was never finished and was destroyed before the end of the century. Given the fact that Romney was working on the 'Tempest' and the 'Fiend' subjects concurrently, it is not so surprising that the same drawing should be associated with both subjects. The 'electric current' of which Kidson speaks is almost tangible in the Eton study.
Romney's painting of the shipwreck scene which opens Shakespeare's play The Tempest was exhibited at Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery in 1790. Even before this project was launched, in November 1786, Romney had begun sketches for a painting of the subject, which he then expanded, adding to the number of figures for the large canvas, which was to measure fifteen feet wide. The precise incident depicted in the painting is not represented on stage, but recounted later, and concerns the moment when the young prince Ferdinand jumps from the sinking ship; behind him, his father King Alonso is prevented from restraining him by a number of the sailors. Prospero is seen controlling events from a cave on the shore nearby.

This study appears to be intended as one of the mariners, or possibly the king himself. The work evolved through a number of variants and the finished composition is now known only from the engraving. This head does not appear in any of the extant versions; it is therefore difficult to know whether it is to be read as the king's expression of dispair, or as the panic-stricken determination of one of the crew. The features, according to Patricia Jaffe, were probably studied from Romney's friend William Hayley.

MFW 30

height (actual size): 359mm
width (actual size): 367mm

Stamped with the collector's mark of Alfred de Pass, three stars below a crown; inscribed on verso: 'Study of Head / in / Tempest'

Pencil and wash, the paper is watermarked

Romney, George, 1734 - 1802 (Artist)

1788-1789

Provenance: Collection of Alfred de Pass; by whom bequeathed to the Royal Institution of Cornwall; by whom sold through Christie's, 22 February 1966 (presumed to be Lot 33); from whom purchased by Agnew's; with Alister Mathews, Bournemouth; from whom purchased by Martin Whiteley; by whom bequeathed to Eton College

Exhibited: 'A Genius for Watercolour', Christie’s, London, 6 to 24 January 2003, catalogue number 24; 'Humphrey Ocean: Fresh as Paint', The Verey Gallery, Eton College, 9 June to 30 October 2022, catalogue number 4

Whiteley, Martin F, 1930 - 1984: Bequeathed to Eton by Martin Whiteley

• Wilcox, T., A Genius for Watercolour; Watercolours from the Eton College Collection, Christie's exhibition catalogue, London, 2003 (No. 24, p. 33)
• Ryan, H., Hidden Treasures, W.S. Fine Art exhibition catalogue, 2010 (No. 7, p. 24-25)