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Creator:
George Romney, 1734–1802
Title:
Howard Visiting a Prison
Date:
ca. 1790–92
Materials & Techniques:
Black ink with watercolor over graphite on moderately thick moderately textured white laid paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 14 1/4 x 21 inches (36.2 x 53.3 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:

Circular collector's mark: Xavier Haas (Lugt 4541); oval collector's mark: Xavier Haas (Lugt 4542)

Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Yale Art Gallery Collection, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. J. Richardson Dilworth, B.A. 1938
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1979.12.665
Classification:
Drawings & Watercolors
Collection:
Prints and Drawings
Subject Terms:
baby | bodies | children | correctional institution | historical subject | jail | nursing | prison | sublime | tortured
Access:
On view at the Yale University Art Gallery
Link:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:6795
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At a time when Romney was increasingly interested in revolutionary politics, he made hundreds of drawings of reformer John Howard confronting the miserable conditions inside prisons. In these forceful depictions of incarcerated people, tangled bodies meld together in an underworld-like setting suggestive of the descriptions of hell in Dante’s Inferno. Romney’s mythical treatment of prison reform elevates this contemporary subject to the status of history painting. However, as with many of Romney’s drawings of ambitious subjects, the prison sketches never resulted in a painting. Although he desired to become a history painter, his dependence on portraiture for his livelihood left little time to commit literary and historical subjects to canvas. Instead, these grander aspirations survive in drawings such as these.

Gallery label for Romney: Brilliant Contrasts in Georgian England (Yale University Art Gallery, 2025-03-28 - 2025-09-14)

Romney: Brilliant Contrasts in Georgian England (Yale University Art Gallery, 2025-03-28 - 2025-09-14) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Art in Focus : John Flaxman Modeling Bust of William Hayley (Yale Center for British Art, 2010-02-04 - 2010-05-30) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

British Vision - Observation and Imagination in British Art (Museum of Fine Arts Ghent, 2007-10-06 - 2008-01-13) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Robert Hoozee, British vision : observation and imagination in British art, 1750-1950, , Mercatorfonds Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Brussels , Ghent, 2007, p. 338, no. 225, fig. 225, N6767 B78 2007 + OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Suzanne E. May, " Sublime and infernal reveries " : George Romney and the creation of an eighteenth-century history painter, Thesis (Ph.D.) -- John Moores University, Liverpool, 2007 , British Thesis Service, Boston Spa, Wetherby, April 2007, v. 1, p. 112, v. 2, fig. 103, NJ18.R65 M39 2007A OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Smith College Museum of Art, The drawings of George Romney ; an exhibition held from May to September 1962 at the Smith College Museum of Art , Northampton, Mass., Northampton, MA, 1962, cat. no. 80, pl. XXXVI, NJ18 R65 S46 [ORBIS]


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