Elizabeth Ward

George Romney was one of the greatest portrait painters of the eighteenth century in England and is still known for his graceful portraits of English society. Romney worked extensively and often scheduled many different sittings in one day. This canvas attests to the rapidity and economy of his technique.

Although the sitter was identified as Elizabeth Ward when the Johnson acquired the painting in 1998, her exact family lineage is not clear. However, this portrait of a child demonstrates a trend in which artists began to depart from portraiture conventions that presented children as miniature adults, treasuring instead the precocity of childhood as a unique phase of life. The grace of the girl’s embracing gesture, the tilt of her head, and her steady, knowing gaze reveal Romney’s ability to capture the sweetness of youth. The bird’s nest with two baby birds cradled in her arms makes poignant analogy with both the promise of the girl’s future and the precariousness of childhood.

At the same time, the informal wooded setting, a nod to the classical tradition that is partially a development of Romney’s Italian sojourn of 1773–75, puts the child and her bird’s nest treasure in the context of the girl’s exploration of her surroundings. A curiosity about the natural world and, possibly, care for the lives of nature’s smallest creatures, as if perhaps the nest has fallen, could demonstrate that young Elizabeth is showing the important promise of maternal instincts.

(Andrew C. Weislogel, A Handbook of the Collections, 2018)