Portrait of Emma, Lady Hamilton (1765-1815), as a Bacchante, half-length, in a yellow dress and white shawl, in a landscape

Emma was born Amy Lyon on 26 April in 1765. The daughter of a Cheshire blacksmith, she moved to London in her early teens to make her fortune. It is thought that she worked as an actress's maid and as a 'living illustration' at Dr Graham's 'Temple of Health' in Pall Mall, but soon her extraordinary charm and beauty attracted a string of distinguished lovers. For some time she was mistress to Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh, with whom she had a daughter, and then to the Hon. Charles Greville, nephew of Sir William Hamilton. On meeting her for the first time, Hamilton exclaimed that she was far more beautiful ‘than anything found in nature; and finer in her particular way than anything that is to be found in antique art, even at Naples among the treasures of Herculaneum and Pompeii.’ Soon after, she became Hamilton’s mistress and finally in 1791, his wife. Two years later Lady Hamilton first met Admiral Horatio Nelson and, in 1801, she gave birth to Nelson’s daughter, Horatia. After her husband’s death in 1803 and Nelson’s at Trafalgar in 1805, Lady Hamilton descended heavily into debt despite considerable legacies and died impecunious and largely forgotten in Calais in 1815.