YCBA Collections Search

These drawings by Romney and Dighton [B1979.12.667 and B1986.29.373] represent two approaches to contemporary history: one looking to the generalizing and universalizing of Grand Manner history painting, the other arising from the world of caricature. From the 1770s the philanthropist John Howard campaigned for the reform of prison conditions first in England and Wales and later in Europe. He toured prisons throughout the Continent, finally dying in Russia in 1790 from a fever contracted during one of his prison visits. Howard had declined to be painted by Romney in 1785; but after Howard's death, Romney set to work on what he hoped would be a series of paintings celebrating Howard's heroic efforts in alleviating human misery. In the early 1790s Romney produced a series of powerful drawings of nightmarish prison scenes in which Howard's experiences are transmuted into universal images of anguish and despair. Although Romney was one of the most fashionable society portrait painters of eighteenth-century England, success in the area of art he most valued - history painting - eluded him. As with so many of his other ambitious plans for history paintings, his projected paintings of Howard visiting prisons never progressed beyond these drawings.

On August 2, 1786, a mentally disturbed woman named Margaret Nicholson tried to stab George III; the monarch, escaping unharmed, pardoned his assailant, who was confined to Bethlehem Hospital. Dighton's drawing is a piece of visual reportage, attempting to convey the actual appearance of the attempted assassination. For Dighton, the son of a printseller and himself a caricaturist and printseller, topicality and timeliness were of the essence. The print after the drawing was published just three days after the assault. Although there is nothing of caricature in his description of the attack on the king, neither is there any attempt to render the scene heroic or timeless.

Scott Wilcox

Scott Wilcox, Line of beauty : British drawings and watercolors of the eighteenth century, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2001, p. 50, cat. no. 39, NC228 W53 2001 (YCBA)