Unseen review - a beguiling delight full of intimate surprises

Drawing exhibition hints at the inexhaustible creativity that comes about when a human being takes hold of a pencil

Emma, Lady Hamilton’s lips pout and pucker in empty space in no less than seven repeated drawings of the sensual mouth of Horatio Nelson’s lover on a sheet of sketches by the Georgian artist George Romney. There’s a formally posed drawing of Lady Hamilton on the sheet too but it’s in his intense studies of her lips that Romney – who portrayed this famous beauty again and again in his paintings – reveals the erotic fascination she held for him.

Drawings are far more personal than paintings. To look at a painting that has survived the centuries is to look at a restored, even remade, object whose connection with the hand of its original creator is sometimes quite remote – even when it is not the work of the artist’s assistants. But a drawing is a simple, direct, sometimes highly experimental creation. It has a private, informal quality that makes it truly intimate. Romney’s paintings of Lady Hamilton are muffled by a social politeness that his drawing crazily escapes to expose his surreal passion for her luscious lips.

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