Study for Cassandra Raving

This drawing likely relates to Romney’s portrait of Emma Hart as the figure of Circe in a full-length oil painting from 1782. The vivacious young beauty was the artist’s inspiration for a series of fancy portraits in which she is cast in a variety of imaginative roles. In Homer’s Odyssey, the enchantress Circe turns Odysseus’s crew into swine before becoming his lover. Here, Romney creates a sense of power and movement through the surging figure’s raised arm and billowing sash. With her wide, staring eyes and powerful gestures, she is a vision of dangerous femininity (2022).