The Fiend Conjured by Bolingbroke (from Wiliam Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 2)

George Romney, known for his elegant portraits in oil, exhibits a remarkable freedom in his drawings. Draftsmanship was the primary outlet for Romney's interest in extreme emotional states, often related to subjects drawn from literature, history, or the stage. A member of a small club of theater afficionados in London called the Unincreasables, Romney planned a number of works for the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, an ambitious project intended to invigorate British painting. This drawing is a study for the "Fiend" in a scene from Henry VI, Part II, in which Margery Jourdain (said to be a witch) and Roger Bolingbroke (believed to be a conjurer) bring forth an evil spirit. Romney renders the figure and his devilish grimace with a deft hand, capturing his shock of flame-like hair and his sweeping robe with a minimum of strokes of grey wash and pen-and-ink. Note the plays between passages (robe and hair and shadow) that lend a witty sensibility to this sheet.