# Study for Elizabeth Warren as Hebe [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [ROMNEY, George]() - Date: 1751-1800 - Technique: Pencil, ink and wash on paper, 380 x 215 mm ## Commentary Romney was born in Lancashire and trained as a cabinet-maker before turning to painting; after visits to Paris and Rome he established himself as a fashionable portraitist in London, rivalling Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. He developed a distinctive style of draughtsmanship, often employing swathes of dark ink to establish the main features and key accents of light in his paintings. This impressive drawing is related to a portrait of Elizabeth Warren \(National Museums and Galleries, Cardiff\), commissioned by her father, which shows her at about the age of sixteen, just before her marriage to Viscount Bulkeley. It was the first major portrait Romney worked on after his return from Italy, and he made a number of preparatory studies for it, carefully refining his ideas. Hebe, an ideal personification of youth, was the cup-bearer of the gods, and in the final work Romney depicts his sitter before a cascade, with a vase before her, and an eagle, representing Jupiter, ominously hovering above. ## Related artworks - [Lady in a Brown Robe]() - [Miss Constable]() - [Portrait of a Gentleman]() - [Portrait of Edward Wortley Montagu]() - [Portrait of George, Lord Brooke, with a Dog]() - [Portrait of Lady Anne Barbara Russell]() - [Portrait of Lady Emma Hamilton as Flora]() - [Portrait of Lady Georgiana Smyth and her Son]() - [Portrait of Mrs Anne Carwardine and Her Eldest Son, Thomas]() - [Portrait of Mrs. Harriet Greer]() - [Portrait of Mrs Henrietta Morris and Her Son John]() - [Portrait of Mrs. Henry Ainslie with Her Child]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()