@mastersthesis {11835,
	title = {Emma Hamilton, a Model of Agency in Late Eighteenth-Century Europe},
	year = {2014},
	school = {Montreal},
	abstract = {Emma Hamilton (1765-1815) had a marked impact at a pivotal moment in European history and art. This dissertation shows that Emma drew her particular potency from her ability to negotiate these different and at times contradictory identities=object and subject; model and sitter; artist, muse, and work of art; wife, mistress, and prostitute; commoner and aristocrat; socialite and ambassadress; and performer of myriad historical, biblical, literary, and mythological male and female characters. Emma displayed astonishing resilience, found an effective way to assert her agency, and was a powerful inspiration for generations of artists and of women in their own search for expression and self-actualization. The wife of England{\textquoteright}s ambassador to Naples, the favourite of the queen of Naples, and the lover of Admiral Horatio Nelson, she was an agent on the political stage during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era. She adapted, adjusted, and reinvented herself in her dizzying rise from rags to riches. She entertained and beguiled countless writers, artists, scientists, aristocrats, politicians, and royalty. She participated in the dissemination of Neoclassicism in Europe at the very moment of its efflorescence. She created her Attitudes, a performance that tapped into her epoch{\textquoteright}s taste for classicism, was admired and imitated throughout Europe, and inspired generations of female performers. She learnt to dance the tarantella and introduced it into aristocratic drawing rooms. She influenced an early nineteenth-century network of women that spanned Paris to St Petersburg and included Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun, Germaine de Stael, and Juliette Recamier. An unmatched model and sitter, she inspired artists to produce what they acknowledged to be some of their best work. She appeared in works produced by the major artists of her time, among whom Angelica Kauffman, Benjamin West, Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun, George Romney, James Gillray, Joseph Nollekens, Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Lawrence, and Thomas Rowlandson. And she repeatedly pushed against the limits of social mores. Nevertheless, Emma did not attempt to present a coherent, unified, polished identity. Instead, she was a kaleidoscope of different selves that she kept active and in dialogue with each other, constantly reconfiguring the pieces so that she could simultaneously express herself fully and present to others what they wanted to see.},
	keywords = {Critical Theory/Gender Studies/Visual Studies, Eighteenth-Century Art},
	author = {Ersy Contogouris}
}
