ABSTRACT
This chapter utilizes contemporary theory to understand why artists and historians of performance art have claimed Emma Hamilton as a precursor, and even as one of the first performance artists. Emma featured regularly in the writings of her contemporaries, from William Hayley’s biography of the painter George Romney to Goethe’s Italienische Reise, Henry Angelo’s Reminiscences, and Vigee-Le Brun’s Souvenirs. In her study of late eighteenth-century female amateur performers, the art historian Ann Bermingham describes Emma as a “blank screen on which masculine desire could project itself”. The chapter argues that Emma was always simultaneously object and subject, that she constantly juggled, negotiated, and exhibited these and other seemingly contradictory identities, and that in doing so, she was able to arrogate an agency for herself that proved inspiring to others. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
