George Romney paints the infant Shakespeare

The Infant Shakespeare Attended by Nature and the Passions is, without a doubt, one of the strangest paintings in the Folger collection. It is the work of British artist George Romney (1734–1802) and at first glance could be mistaken for a depiction of the Christian Nativity.

Painted around 1791, the life-size scene features a group of varied figures intently focused on an eerily solemn baby boy. The baby holds a musical instrument in his little hand but pays it no attention. Instead, he stares straight ahead, looking like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. His name appears in the clouds above: Shakspeare (today’s “Shakespeare” spelling was just one of several commonly used before the 20th century). The message is clear. William Shakespeare was born a genius, innately able to channel the full range of human emotions.

Infant Shakespeare was originally created for the Shakespeare Gallery founded by John Boydell (1720–1804) and his nephew Josiah (1752–1817). This fashionable London art gallery opened in 1789 and operated until 1805. The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery’s catalog described Romney’s allegorical scene in two sentences:

Nature is represented with her face unveiled to her favorite Child who is placed between Joy and Sorrow. On the Right-Hand of Nature are Love, Hatred, and Jealousy; on her Left-Hand, Anger, Envy, and Fear.

For what it’s worth, this two-sentence explanation is two sentences more than any other painting in the catalog received. Each catalog entry for the other paintings, which all depict scenes from Shakespeare, is just an excerpt from the relevant play. The word choice is deliberate here. The other paintings are “scenes from Shakespeare” rather than “scenes from Shakespeare’s plays.” They aren’t representations of stage performances, they’re what the artist imagined the characters would do in real life. Reading along shows that some painters made fairly loose interpretations while others stayed so close to the text that you can imagine speech bubbles over the characters’ heads.

The notion of Shakespeare as a natural genius didn’t originate with George Romney. It developed over the course of the 18th century and had become a commonplace. Romney’s specific visualization of an allegorical figure of Nature “unveiling” herself to Shakespeare seems to have been inspired by the poem “The Progress of Poesy: A Pindaric Ode” by Thomas Gray. First published in 1757, the poem appeared in at least 15 more editions over the next 20 years. The first stanza of the third part describes Nature unveiling “her awful face” to Shakespeare, and Shakespeare being “the dauntless Child” who can control Joy, Horror, Fears, and Tears (or “Sorrow” to use the vocabulary in the Boydell catalog’s list of Passions).

Far from the sun and summer-gale,
In thy green lap was Nature’s darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon stray’d,
To Him the mighty Mother did unveil
Her awful face: The dauntless Child
Stretch’d forth his little arms, and smiled.
This pencil take, (she said) whose colours clear
Richly paint the vernal year:
Thine too these golden keys, immortal Boy!
This can unlock the gates of Joy;
Of Horrour that, and thrilling Fears,
Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic Tears.
—Thomas Gray, Poems by Mr. Gray. London: J. Dodsley, 1768, p. 46–47

18th-century readers would have understood “awful” in its original meaning (that is, “awe-inspiring”) but the “lucid Avon” wasn’t necessarily a big enough clue to the stanza’s subject. To make things perfectly clear, from 1768 onward Gray included a footnote identifying “Nature’s darling” as Shakespeare.

Romney’s sketchbooks show that he worked on ideas for infant Shakespeare compositions off and on for 15 years, mixing and matching various elements. These sketches in the Folger collection, shown below, are just a few of the many that still exist today.

George Romney’s ideas for infant Shakespeare compositions

Eventually, the sketches led to two finished paintings. One is an intimate scene titled Shakespeare Nursed by Tragedy and Comedy. In it, baby Shakespeare interacts with the world around him and looks like a real baby. This painting has always been privately owned but was loaned to the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery for a time, and the Boydells published it as a print.

Shakespeare Nursed by Tragedy and Comedy

The other painting is the one now in the Folger collection. The same two models who posed for Comedy and Tragedy appear next to the baby, but this time they represent Joy and Sorrow. Unlike Shakespeare Nursed by Tragedy and Comedy, this scene is packed with other figures. Behind Joy and Sorrow in the center, we see Nature. On the left, Hatred and Love seem joined into a two-headed creature while Jealousy peers over their shoulders. From left to right on the other side, we see Anger, Fear, and Envy. The engraved version of the painting shows the details more clearly.

The Infant Shakespeare Attended by Nature and the Passions

The engraved version also reveals an additional figure in the upper left, above and behind Jealousy. This figure is completely invisible in normal viewing conditions but can just be made out if you zoom in on the digital image. Who is this mysterious ninth Passion with his eyes closed and eyebrows furrowed? The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery catalog description quoted at the start of this blog post does not name him. Maybe he was already virtually invisible in 1791? But why then include him in the published engraving of the painting? The caption in the engraving’s lower margin doesn’t give any clues, it just repeats the words from the catalog, only this time all in italics, “Nature is represented with her face unveiled to her favorite Child, who is placed between Joy and Sorrow. On the right-hand of Nature are Love, Hatred, & Jealousy; on her left hand, Anger, Envy, & Fear.”

Unlike the Three Graces, Nine Muses, or Seven Deadly Sins, where everyone in early modern Europe agreed there were three, nine, and seven respectively, the number of Passions could vary from as few as four to as several dozen, sometimes with an “etc.” at the end of the list. In An Essay on the Art of Acting, first published in 1750, Aaron Hill declares there are exactly ten “Dramatic Passions,” namely Joy, Grief, Fear, Anger, Pity, Scorn, Hatred, Jealousy, Wonder, and Love. Of the eight Passions named in Romney’s Infant Shakespeare, only “Envy” is missing from this list (were “Envy” and “Jealously” being conflated and confused as early as the 18th century?). If Romney had Aaron Hill’s acting theory in mind, that leaves Pity, Scorn, and Wonder as candidates for the mystery figure. The closed eyes and furrowed eyebrows make Pity the most likely, I think. That being said, the fact that the ninth Passion can’t be known for certain might be the point. In the 1790s, looking at paintings and prints was a social occasion. Conversation, not reverent silence, was the norm. What better way to encourage a literally “passionate” discussion?

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