Infant Shakespeare nursed by Tragedy and Comedy,

ca. 1788–91

An avid draftsman and one of the most successful portrait painters of the eighteenth century, Romney aspired to paint British literary and historical subjects, and he often turned to the works of Shakespeare for inspiration. This drawing is one of a series of sketches in which he depicted the allegorical origins of Shakespeare’s lyric genius. In 1792, the wealthy publisher John Boydell commissioned Romney to paint the subject on a grand scale for his newly established Shakespeare Gallery, London. Here, Romney copied the frontal pose for his infant Shakespeare from The Infant Hercules Strangling Serpents, created in 1786 by his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds for Catherine II of Russia, for which the oil sketch hanging below was a study.