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)
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
Gallery Label:
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)
