Visit to Emma Hamilton's Exhibition
"I wish...to show the world that a pretty woman is not allways a fool."
-Emma Hamilton-
I've seen Emma Hamilton's exhibition posters and ads on everywhere. Google knew I was searching this person online and they passed the cookie to Facebook and Facebook is advertising me about Emma Hamilton's exhibition.
As a web design lover, I'm disappointed to say that's the first time I know what's online cookies are used for.
The exhibition is still going on at National Maritime Museum, quite far away from my campus and hostel. Coincidentally, my design heritage lecturer had to bring a bunch of LGC November Batch students to ride the famous ferry to Greenwich, and the museum is just around the corner. 6.50 pounds for the ferry...why....not?
Dropping by at Greenwich with London Global Campus November Batch. They will head to Greenwich Market.
The exterior of National Maritime Museum itself is pretty darn amazing. Looks just like palace. In fact, it used to be Queen's House back in the early 17th century and was built by Jones right after he came back from his grand tour from Italy. This means Jones brought what he learnt from Italy Renaissance period back to London and developed this unique revolutionary white clean building. The wide field surrounding the building makes this place a perfect dating place (not really, your girlfriend will be bored because it's a museum.)
My lecturer and I went it, bought tickets and straight entered the exhibition. We were welcomed by merchandises with a big Emma's face in your face. Wootz that rhymes!
I am not going to go thought the whole story because you know you can always google it. Here I found two resources for you:
If you are really lazy to click on the links, I'll sum her life in one sentence for you: Emma was born poor and got famous when people start to paint her and Mr.Hamilton loved her and bought her paintings, marry her, went to war with her, but she ends up loving another general named Nelson and got pregnant but Nelson died in Trafalgar War and she became single mother and die while drunk.
What. the. heck.
So what's so special about this exhibition when you can just google her online and sum her life in one sentence(or paragraph, whatever)?
A Realisation of Neo-classical Art
Well, the exhibition is a compilation of her period of art and inspirations, which again makes you think about her good taste in art. Everything was happening during the late 18th century, which is when Industrial Revolution kinda kicks in and there were the revival of art in Neo-Classicism, Romanticism and Pre-Raphaelite. During that time, Neo-classicism encourage us to look back to the old masterpiece of Roman and Greeks to understand the beauty of art. It is obvious when most of her learnings in performance art and paintings were done referencing to the Greek mythical characters.
And what makes Greek art great and worth a revival (that's why it's called Neo-Classicism because Neo means new) is due to their pursuit in perfection of art. Greek Art, ranging from Archaic to Hellenistic period is a good way for everyone to learn how sculptures evolved from time to time and what's beauty and perfection back in the centuries. Their overly idealistic perfection is so obvious that their idea is stilled used today for logos such as Nike's logo from Winged Victory of Samothrace.
As we see from the paintings of Emma by George Romney, most of the paintings are Emma depicting Greek characters. George Romney is one of the finest portrait artist that time and ranks with Sir Joshua Reynolds. In fact, Mr. Hamilton himself kept quite a lot of Greek decorative, which later inspired Emma to create a new performance art called "Attitude" and made her become a celebrity right before her politician life.
Another perspective of Emma Hamilton's life
Anywhere in the exhibition, Emma is found to be linked with "the mistress of Lord Nelson". Emma got his another name from her first husband William Hamilton, thus Emma Hamilton. She then caught in a love scandal with when she was pregnant, having Lord Nelson's kid in her stomach (I try to make this sounds elementary). Don't ask me about her marriage status with Lord Nelson, I'm so so so confuse about her life. I bet she's confused about her life too!
That being said, Emma still did a good job to evacuate the royal family of Hamilton to a safe place when French invaded Napel. Right before she was married to Sir Hamilton, she was a celebrity famous for her paintings. That means her life was kinda like a roller coaster, born poor, work as servant, drew by people, became celebrity, married to royal, fought war, involved in love scandal, had people's baby, baby's father died, royal husband died too, left alone and drink to dead.
"Her life was kinda like a roller coaster, born poor, work as servant, drew by people, became celebrity, married to royal, fought war, involved in love scandal, had people's baby, baby's father died, royal husband died too, left alone and drink to dead."
From celebrity to politician, she's the perfect capable woman to rule the country and drive all men crazy. But until now she's still being accused to seduce the royalty people to live a good life. She always had the title of "mistress of Lord Nelson" when "Emma" was mentioned. How pity!
Lesson learnt: don't do silly things when you're young. You don't want to be called as mistress of Najib Razak.
