BRITISH ARTISTS 
 
 ROMNEY
 
 f 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO
 
 BRITISH ARTISTS 
 
 ROMNEY 
 
 Edited by S. C. KLINES SMITH
 
 BRITISH ARTISTS 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 S. C. KAINES SMITH, M.A., M.B.E. 
 
 The volumes at present arranged comprise the following, 
 here given in chronological order. 
 
 Vol. 
 
 I. The XVI Century Painters. 
 With a note on the influence 
 of Holbein. 
 
 II. Cornelius Johnson and 
 Jamesone. 
 
 III. Dobson and Robert Walker. 
 With a note on the work 
 of Van Dyck in England. 
 
 IV. J. Riley, Greenhill, J. M. 
 Wright and Mary Beale. 
 
 V. Lely and Kneller. 
 
 VI. Thornhill, Jervas, Dandridge, 
 and Hudson. 
 
 VII. Hogarth. 
 VIII. Reynolds. 
 IX. Gainsborough. 
 X. Roraney. 
 XI. Raeburn. 
 XII. Hoppner and Lawrence. 
 
 XIII. Opie and Cosway. 
 
 XIV. Wright of Derby. 
 
 XV. B. West, J. S. Copley and G. 
 Stuart. With a note on 
 American painting in the 
 XVI Ilth Century. 
 
 Vol. 
 
 XVI. Paul Sandby, Towne, 
 Couzens, with a note on 
 the rise of water- 
 colour painting. 
 
 XVII. Copley Fielding. 
 XVIII. Cox and De Wint. 
 
 XIX. Kauffman, Bartolozzi and 
 Zoffany. With a note 
 on Foreign Members of 
 the Royal Academy in 
 1768. 
 
 XX. Morland, Ibbetson, and 
 James Ward. 
 
 XXI. Richard Wilson and 
 Joseph Farington. 
 
 XXII. Barker of Bath and the 
 Bath Painters. 
 
 XXIII. John (old) Crome, with a 
 
 note on the Norwich 
 School. 
 
 XXIV. Cotman. 
 XXV. Constable. 
 
 XXVI. Bonington and Girtin. 
 
 XXVII. Bewick and Clarkson 
 Stanfield. With a note 
 on the Newcastle group. 
 
 XXVIII. Turner. 
 XXIX. Alfred Stevens. 
 
 OTHERS IN PREPARATION.
 
 Me 
 
 GEORGE ROMNEY
 
 BRITISH ARTISTS 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 S. C. KAINES SMITH, M.A. 
 
 ROMNEY 
 
 By 
 
 B. L. K. HENDERSON, D.LIT. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 First Published in 1922 
 
 PRINTED IN GRKAT BRITAIN
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to my 
 friend, Hector Suffling, Barrister-at-Law, for 
 generous assistance in this little book. Originally 
 it was our intention to work together throughout 
 in the gathering of material ; but events occurred 
 that rendered this impossible to the extent we had 
 contemplated. However, it would be unfair not 
 to pay full tribute to Mr. Suffling's skilful con- 
 tribution. The book has gained very materially 
 by his aid, and lost much by his inability to proceed 
 further in his co-operation. 
 
 I have also to make the following acknowledg- 
 ments : to the Director of the National Gallery, 
 for permission to reproduce The Beaumont Family, 
 Mr. & Mrs. William Lindow, Jacob Morland, and 
 the Lady and Child ; to the Director of the National 
 Portrait Gallery, for the Portrait of the A rtist and 
 Richard Cumberland ; to Mrs. F. Davies, for Miss 
 Casson ; and to Lord Alfred de Rothschild, for 
 Lady Hamilton as " Errma." 
 
 B. L. K. HENDERSON.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 I HAVE heard the possessor of a small but 
 splendid house, full of seventeenth and 
 eighteenth century forebears, complain that 
 they were difficult to live up to, and my 
 first impulse was to quote that proverb of 
 Spain which says that God gives almonds 
 to those who have no teeth. Reynolds 
 was there, and Gainsborough, beside whom 
 Cotes and Hudson did their best, and 
 Highmore, prim and dignified ; while Lely 
 and Riley, and, for the parson member of 
 the family, excellent Mary Beale, helped to 
 people the walls. It was a noble company. 
 Yet at the end of a week of their society 
 I began to sympathise, just a little, with my 
 host ; I felt that they had to be lived up to. 
 There was no Romney there. One does 
 not live up to Romney's portraits, one 
 lives with them. They are accommodating, 
 friendly folk, looking their best on purpose 
 to please, rather than to impress us. Their 
 personality is not so underlined as to intrude 
 upon our own. Their modelling, their
 
 viii Preface 
 
 light and shade, do not clamour for 
 recognition, and the artist, reticent in his 
 work as he was in his life, does not obtrude 
 his skill upon us, but is content to turn it, 
 by an alchemy that is quite his own, into 
 pure and simple pleasure of the eyes. 
 
 That, I think, is the secret of Romney's 
 popularity for popular he undoubtedly is. 
 The slowness of his rise to fame, as the sale- 
 room measures fame, is due largely to the 
 fact that he is not an artist's artist. There 
 are moments when his drawing is positively 
 wild ; there a"re instances when his wonderful 
 instinct for decorative design, combined with 
 the broad temerity of his brushwork, reduce 
 his work almost to the quality of a lovely 
 wall-decoration, with human form added to 
 it as an accident. The purity and unerring 
 harmony of his colour so far transcend the 
 vitality of some of his portraits as portraits, 
 that the picture, divested of all reference to 
 anything but itself, can be, and is, enjoyed 
 simply as a thing of beauty and on this 
 ground the mere layman can share a stand- 
 point with the professional critic and the 
 theorist in aesthetic. 
 
 Dr. Henderson expresses regret that the 
 conditions of Romney's life prevented him 
 from launching out into imaginative
 
 Preface ix 
 
 subjects ; speaking for myself, I am very 
 content that it should have been so. The 
 readers of this book will rejoice with me to 
 find in Dr. Henderson a prophet of the 
 greatness of Romney, and will admit the 
 force of his argument that the painter who 
 could produce such joyous work even while 
 bound by the trammels of portraiture, might 
 well have been among the world's greatest 
 imaginative painters. But if that had been 
 so, we must inevitably have lost the Romney 
 that we have, and that is a loss that I 
 cannot contemplate with calm ; for we 
 should have lost a human being and an 
 artist as well as a portrait painter. 
 
 An essential part of the charm that is 
 the only possible word of Romney's 
 portraits lies in that very sameness which 
 has been the sport of some critics of his work. 
 It is perfectly true that, working perpetually, 
 and always at speed, he has reduced the 
 component parts of a woman's face to a 
 series of formulae, which he combines and 
 recombines in slightly varying ways. It 
 is perfectly true that from 1782 onwards 
 all his work is more or less adapted to the 
 formula in part derived from, in part 
 imposed upon, the features of Emma Hart. 
 But this is all to the good, for the result
 
 x Preface 
 
 of it is that his pictures are, so to speak, 
 submissive to our enjoyment. We can 
 take their method for granted, for we know 
 it by heart, and we can be content to thank 
 Heaven, as probably many of his sitters 
 did, that he has made them less like them- 
 selves than like his own ideal. 
 
 Dr. Henderson has pointed out that those 
 who used Romney as a portrait painter 
 were but rarely interested in him as a man ; 
 and I think that, Lady Hamilton apart, 
 there is very little, if any, evidence that 
 Romney took any more personal interest in 
 the generality of his sitters than they took 
 in him. In saying that this results in a 
 marked quality of impersonal uniformity 
 in his portraits, I am neither disparaging 
 Romney nor differing from Dr. Henderson 
 in his estimate of Romney as a painter of 
 character. I am merely asserting that as 
 an imaginative painter Romney found 
 scope for self-expression within the limits 
 imposed upon him by portrait-painting, 
 with the result that, whatever the subject, 
 a " Romney " is always a piece of Romney 
 himself ; its purity and simplicity are those 
 of the man's own mind, its very lack of 
 penetration is part of his own shyness, its 
 occasional depth and force are the outcome of
 
 Preface xi 
 
 his own rare sympathies, as in the John 
 Wesley. 
 
 Dr. Henderson has written with en- 
 thusiasm, and I think that enthusiasm is 
 needed, if one is to get beyond enjoyment to 
 understanding of such a man and such a 
 painter as Romney. The work of many 
 artists calls for cold and deliberate analysis, 
 and that of many others for the application 
 of highly developed principles of aesthetic ; 
 but to attempt the criticism of the work 
 of George Romney on such lines as these 
 would be to abandon the natural and 
 unstudied delight that he derived from 
 simple beauty of colour and design, and that 
 he strove to pass on by unsophisticated 
 craft. 
 
 If the work of Romney had been difficult 
 to enjoy, he would have rivalled Reynolds 
 long ago ; but nothing shakes the confidence 
 of the professed critic in the greatness of a 
 painter more than the discovery that any 
 school-girl can enjoy his pictures. It is 
 just because Romney 's pictures are lovable 
 and " liveable " that he has been long in 
 coming into his own, and only time has 
 brought the great ones of the earth to accept 
 the verdict of ordinary folk, whose very 
 tenacity in holding to their love has hindered
 
 xii Preface 
 
 the critics in their studies. There must 
 still be scores of portraits from this painter's 
 prolific hand hidden in the homes of those 
 that love them without the thought of art 
 or of sale-rooms, much as the picture which 
 is here reproduced for the first time, the 
 portrait of little Miss Casson, was hidden 
 when I met with it less than a year ago. 
 It was unknown to Messrs. Ward & Roberts, 
 and can scarcely have been seen by any 
 outside a narrow circle, since it was first 
 brought home from Cavendish Square ; 
 painted to commemorate the infant genius 
 of a child who, when but seven years old, had 
 performed in public on the instrument that 
 figures in the picture, it had been a " family 
 possession " ever since ; and is, I think, 
 a testimony to the sincerity and simplicity 
 of the painter's ideals, that, in simple 
 surroundings, it was in no wise out of place. 
 A Reynolds there would have looked like 
 a Field-Marshal in a sentry-box ; a Gains- 
 borough like a court-lady in a country lane. 
 But Miss Casson looked like what she was, 
 a little girl at home. 
 
 One does not live up to Romney's 
 portraits, one lives with them if one has 
 the luck. 
 
 S. C. KAINES SMITH.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION ..... ix 
 
 CHAPTER I : BIOGRAPHICAL AND PERSONAL i 
 
 ,, II : TRAINING AND ASSOCIATION 
 
 WITH ARTISTS . . -37 
 
 III : STYLE, DEVELOPMENT, CHARAC- 
 TERISTICS .... 65 
 
 IV : THE QUALITY OF THE ARTIST 101 
 
 ,, V : ROMNEY'S INFLUENCE ON CON- 
 TEMPORARIES AND SUCCES- 
 SORS, AND ON PUBLIC TASTE 141 
 
 APPENDIX I : LIST OF ROMNEY'S PICTURES 155 
 ,, II : LIST OF AUTHORITIES . .158
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 1. PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST . Frontispiece 
 
 2. Miss CASSON ..... 34 
 
 3. RICHARD CUMBERLAND ... 48 
 
 4. Mr. & Mrs. WILLIAM LINDOW . . 66 
 
 5. LADY HAMILTON AS " EMMA " . . 82 
 
 6. JACOB MORLAND .... 88 
 
 7. LADY AND CHILD . . . .no 
 
 8. THE BEAUMONT FAMILY . . .124
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL AND PERSONAL. 
 
 WHEN we stand before a picture painted by 
 a great master of bygone days, and study 
 not only the subject itself but the technique 
 of the artist, it is strange how profoundly the 
 work affects us. More than printed book, 
 or strains of music, this canvas with its coat 
 of paint speaks straight to the heart, 
 evoking the years that have sped. To read 
 a passage from Shakespeare is to share 
 awhile his thought, or to look through his 
 eyes upon the concourse of life around him ; 
 yet apart from thought there is no comrade- 
 ship in the volume we hold. Shakespeare's 
 hand never touched it ; his eyes never 
 rested on it. If it had been so, our hearts 
 would glow each time our fingers came in 
 contact with its pages. 
 
 In this respect the picture is altogether 
 different. It is, as it were, a little canvas 
 
 6
 
 2 Romney 
 
 world into which the human creator of a 
 bygone day worked his soul and said : " Let 
 there be light." As we look at it, there are 
 moments in which we feel strongly and 
 disturbingly near to the man who fashioned 
 it from his own brain. We can see, as 
 though they had been made yesterday, the 
 marks of his brush. We know that we are 
 standing as he stood when he looked upon 
 his creation, and saw that it was good. 
 This picture is, indeed, no cold, dull thing. 
 It was once the very life of the man, a 
 phase of his existence that passed from his 
 heart of hearts to his canvas, to remind us 
 of the world in which he lived and moved. 
 In reviewing the main features of the life 
 of George Romney it is well to recollect that, 
 while the life of an ordinary man is never 
 entirely isolated, that of an eminent person, 
 by reason of his station, necessarily comes 
 into touch with much that is vital to the age 
 in which he lives. We have yet, so it would 
 seem, much to learn before we understand 
 the eighteenth century with its manifold 
 activities and experimental modes of life. 
 The nineteenth century, a next-door neigh- 
 bour among the centuries, was somewhat
 
 Biographical and Personal 3 
 
 inclined to disregard the true greatness of 
 the preceding hundred years, and to under- 
 estimate, with true neighbourly disdain, the 
 significance of their history. In all proba- 
 bility, as the English race moves further 
 along the pathway of time, it will come 
 to a higher estimate of generations that 
 established the material and spiritual founda- 
 tions of our Empire, and set to work schemes 
 that have since become dominant impulses 
 in our national life. Our descendants will 
 see more distinctly the meaning of an age 
 which, after all, is historically still very close 
 to us, and they will extol, as we cannot yet 
 do, the self-sacrifice and energy, the fore- 
 sight and the skill that gave birth to new 
 life in so many directions. 
 
 Among the men of that generation lived 
 George Romney. He was born on the a6th 
 December, 1734, and died on November 
 I5th, 1802. The years of his life coincided 
 with one of the most active periods of our 
 national existence. By the force of his 
 genius he rose to a position which brought 
 him into touch with many of the most 
 eminent men and women of his day. For 
 that reason, as well as for the value of his
 
 4 Romney 
 
 work, we look back upon his career with 
 added interest, seeing in his life one of the 
 vital threads that composed the woof of that 
 splendid age. A glance at the names of the 
 persons who sat for him reveals a wonderful 
 diversity of gifts which is at once a tribute 
 to his reputation, and illuminating to any- 
 one who seeks to recall in their fulness the 
 ranks of human life in the eighteenth 
 century. As we review the work of this 
 retiring genius, our curiosity is excited by 
 the discovery that he painted not only so- 
 called pillars of society, but in the course 
 of his quiet life he met with Laurence 
 Sterne, William Cowper, William BJake, 
 Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Edmund 
 Gibbon, in the world of letters ; statesmen 
 such as Pitt and Townshend ; preachers and 
 theologians such as John Wesley and Dr. 
 Paley ; Sir Hyde Parker and Admiral Keppel 
 among naval men ; and in the world of 
 science Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of 
 Charles Darwin. These are but a few names 
 chosen at random from the long list of his 
 men sitters. The women he painted offer 
 a list equally fascinating. Reading his life 
 as told by Hayley, his friend, or by John
 
 Biographical and Personal 5 
 
 Romney, his son, we seem to see a pageant 
 of splendid, glittering life passing through 
 his studio and associating with this hyper- 
 sensitive man, while he, looking upon the 
 virtue and valour, the genius, the wit and 
 the beauty of the age, takes up his brush 
 and paints that stately procession. " History 
 is a pageant and not a philosophy." Not 
 for its intrinsic merit alone, but also for the 
 myriad shifting side-lights flung upon the 
 fleeting three-score years of human existence 
 does the genius of George Romney draw us 
 into the charm of its circle. 
 
 George was the son of John Romney,* 
 a builder and cabinet-maker, and of Ann 
 Simpson, his wife. Those who delight to 
 trace the influence of heredity would find 
 pleasure in pondering upon the talents of 
 " honest John Rumney " as he wrote the 
 name and the outflow of that genius in his 
 son. The relation between the son's and 
 the father's talent affords a strangely parallel 
 study to that of Mr. Lamb senior and his son 
 
 * Sir Herbert Maxwell advances the ingenious 
 suggestion that the name is derived from " Romany " 
 and that the Romneys probably came from a Gipsy 
 stock.
 
 6 Romney 
 
 Charles. George underwent a more or less 
 useless schooling at Dalton, and so small was 
 his response to the " humanities " that he 
 came home at the early age of eleven to 
 assist his father in his business. In those 
 early days, when genius was undoubtedly 
 stirring restlessly within him, the boy 
 devoted himself to making fiddles. A 
 passion for music remained with him for life. 
 How often in biography do we find the 
 genius of a man suggesting that, if it had not 
 flowed in one channel, some other course 
 might easily have been found by which it 
 could move towards the ocean of fame. 
 
 But the genius of the artist would out. 
 He drew portraits of his father's workmen. 
 One of these men* (all honour to this 
 obscure craftsman !) lent the boy an illus- 
 
 * Sam Knight, a working-man who boarded with 
 Mr. Romney. This meritorious patron of the arts, 
 and founder, as he may be called, of the fortunes of 
 our painter, being luckily a man of more than 
 common curiosity, put himself to the expense of 
 taking in a monthly magazine . . . and when Sam 
 Knight had satisfied his hunger and thirst after 
 knowledge, he was in the custom of lending his 
 magazine to his eager inmate George. Knight also 
 lent him a copy of Leonardo da Vinci's Treatise on 
 Painting.
 
 Biographical and Personal 7 
 
 trated magazine so that he might copy the 
 engravings. George also made copies from 
 Leonardo's Treatise on Painting. Another 
 stimulating influence in this early stage of 
 life was the friendship which developed 
 between the young artist and a watchmaker 
 named John Williamson. This man had 
 talents that led him to devote his spare time 
 to the study of natural philosophy, 
 mechanics, alchemy, music, and art. Un- 
 fortunately for him the stupid obstinacy and 
 importunity of his wife led her to oppose his 
 studies in every possible manner, and on 
 one occasion with disastrous results. He 
 was engaged in an experiment from which 
 she insisted that he should come to entertain 
 some of her gossiping women acquaintances 
 who had gathered to take refreshment. His 
 furnace exploded, and the results of long 
 research were destroyed. Williamson was 
 a good friend to the boy, and the unhappy 
 married life of the watchmaker so impressed 
 George Romney that, in after years, he used 
 to tell his friend Hayley of the facts, " not 
 without shedding tears of gratitude, in 
 describing his beneficial kindness, and tears 
 of pity for his calamitous fate." Even at
 
 8 Romney 
 
 the end of his life, Romney wished to paint 
 a series of pictures illustrating how William- 
 son's experiments were ruined by the 
 explosion due to his wife's insensate 
 behaviour. Some of Romney 's biographers 
 see in this friendship one of the factors that 
 influenced the artist's own attitude towards 
 matrimony ; but it is far more probable 
 that his own advance to success rendered 
 the introduction of Mrs. Romney into his 
 circle of society an act totally undesirable 
 both to her and to himself. It is still more 
 probable that, in any case, her practical 
 nature would have warred against the 
 ardent tendencies of his artistic temperament 
 and played havoc with his work. Even the 
 patient and saintly Richard Hooker was 
 disturbed by the ignorant and bustling Joan. 
 Several people appear to have detected 
 the promise of the boy's genius. Hayley 
 says : " The fortunate chance which led him 
 to a cultivation of the particular art he was 
 destined to profess was simply this. In his 
 youth he observed great singularity of 
 countenance in a stranger at church ; his 
 parents, to whom he spoke of it, desired him 
 to describe the person. He seized on a
 
 Biographical and Personal 9 
 
 pencil, and delineated the features from 
 memory with such strength of resemblance 
 as amazed and delighted his affectionate 
 parents." This may or may not be true ; 
 but there were others besides Mr. and Mrs. 
 Romney who perceived that here was no 
 ordinary talent. One of his relatives, Mr. 
 Lewthwaite of Millom, urged John Romney 
 to train his son as an artist. The elder 
 brothers had received a good education, and 
 subsequently did well in life, but this boy, 
 destined to exalt the family name to be an 
 English household word, was still following 
 a blind-alley employment. A Mrs. Gardner,* 
 sister of a tradesman at Lancaster, en- 
 couraged George, and the portrait he painted 
 of her was, perhaps, his first serious study ; 
 but, unfortunately, it was not until he was 
 twenty-one, and after the loss of years a 
 loss from which he suffered all his life and 
 which the student of British Art must always 
 deplore that he became apprenticed to 
 Edward Steele, a portrait painter. 
 
 Meanwhile, apart from the deep and 
 subtle influence of nature, Romney 's training 
 
 * Mother of Daniel Gardner, later a pupil of Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds.
 
 lo Romney 
 
 had been of an haphazard kind, and it does 
 not appear that it changed appreciably for 
 the better under the direction of Steele. 
 One biographer* wisely draws attention to 
 the environment of the artist's younger life, 
 and recalls the scenes that daily attracted 
 his notice and sank into his very nature. 
 
 " The Romney homestead stood upon a 
 terrace facing the west and commanding an 
 extensive view of the Irish Sea, while from a 
 hill at the back a wonderful panorama lay 
 unrolled. To the south was the wide Bay 
 of Morecambe, and to the north the estuary 
 of the Duddon. 
 
 " On the Cumberland side the high ground 
 was studded with villas and farmhouses, 
 while behind arose the majestic Blackcomb, 
 its lofty head swathed in grey cloud, and in 
 the distance might be seen the pointed 
 summits of Scaw Hill, the Old Man, and 
 Coniston. To the east lay the rich vale of 
 Furness, its woods and meadows encircled 
 by another range of distant mountains." 
 
 When we think of genius reared amidst 
 such romantic scenes we realise that, in a 
 
 *G. Paston.
 
 Biographical and Personal II 
 
 different age, and with a different training, 
 this youth with his aerial fancy and delicate 
 sense of form, colour and effect, might have 
 been inspired to paint pictures that would 
 have held enraptured the eyes of all who 
 beheld them pictures unfolding the inner 
 meaning of Shakespeare's fancy, or Milton's 
 inspiration, as translated by this child of art. 
 But that was not to be. Romney's life was 
 affected by the materialism rather than by 
 the spirituality of the age in which he lived, 
 and, though he beat his wings against the 
 bars, his genius was mainly destined to 
 produce for posterity the form and features 
 of the men and women of his own generation. 
 George Romney now became the appren- 
 tice of Edward Steele, and also the confidant 
 in his master's matrimonial affairs. The 
 excitement attendant upon Steele's rush for 
 Gretna Green told upon Romney, who, as is 
 stated in the Gentleman's Magazine (1802), 
 " was of an unstable temper, so that the 
 smallest incident of vexation shook his 
 constitution." In his illness he was nursed 
 by his landlady's daughter, Mary Abbott, 
 who had been employed as a domestic 
 servant. An attachment sprang up, and
 
 12 Romney 
 
 they became engaged a situation which 
 again reminds one of Richard Hooker and 
 his unfortunate experience in matrimony. 
 The Abbotts were people of inferior social 
 standing to the Romneys. As Steele had 
 gone to York, he desired his apprentice to 
 join him there as soon as he had recovered 
 from his illness ; so, in October, 1756, 
 George and Mary were united before the 
 young artist's departure. One wonders as 
 to the share the good landlady had in this 
 hasty and unwise match. 
 
 At York Romney met Laurence Sterne, 
 whose portrait Steele was painting at that 
 time, and the illustrations for Tristram 
 Shandy may have been due to this inter- 
 course. Probably Romney knew by sight 
 Dr. Barton (a deformed person with a very 
 large head) who was said locally to have 
 been the original of Dr. Slop. The people 
 of York were accustomed to the appearance 
 of this accoucheur riding mud-spattered 
 astride his tiny pony. Sterne undoubtedly 
 recognised the genius of Steele 's apprentice, 
 and it may have been due to this recognition 
 that the master grew jealous, with the result 
 that the two eventually separated. Romney,
 
 Biographical and Personal 13 
 
 after sojourning at Lancaster, returned to 
 his wife at Kendal and set up for himself as 
 a portrait painter. It is worth while noticing 
 that Steele at first kept his apprentice at 
 work grinding pigments, and, perhaps, this 
 practice gave Romney his perfect knowledge 
 of colour mixing ; for his earliest pictures 
 show a singular delicacy of tone such as 
 would arise from a deep knowledge of blend 
 and effect. 
 
 Although a measure of success attended 
 him locally he gained the approbation of 
 several influential friends, such as the 
 Stricklands of Sizergh, Jacob Marlow of 
 Copplethwaite, and Colonel Wilson of Abbott 
 Hall* Romney's one ambition was to try 
 his fortune in London. He was always a 
 rapid worker, and the six guineas which at 
 this period he earned for a whole-length, or 
 two guineas for a three-quarter length, were 
 sums which, if only he had had sufficient 
 pictures, might have enabled him to save 
 up a sum adequate for his purpose. But 
 clients in that remote district were rare ; 
 
 * Many of Romney's pictures are scattered about 
 the neighbourhood of Kendal, at Sizergh, Dallam 
 Tower, etc.
 
 14 Romney 
 
 money came very slowly, while time passed 
 rapidly ; and, at length, he exhibited at the 
 Town Hall, KendaJ, his little stock of 
 pictures, oil copies of prints of the Dutch 
 Masters,* two scenes from King Lear, and 
 the arrival of Dr. Slop. The total result of 
 his careful saving and the harvest of the 
 lottery at Kendal gave him the sum of 100. 
 Taking 30 of this amount and leaving the 
 residue for his wife and two children, George 
 Romney, at the age of twenty-seven, set out 
 to try his fortune in London. " It is not 
 for man to rest in absolute contentment. He 
 is born to hopes and aspirations as the sparks 
 fly upward : unless he has brutified his 
 nature and quenched his spirit of immor- 
 tality, which is his portion." 
 
 For the purpose of this brief biography it 
 is unnecessary to attempt to trace even the 
 
 * Adam Walker, Romney's early and constant 
 friend, showed Blake Romney's first effort at oil 
 painting which he had treasured carefully. It 
 represented a Dutch scene of Boors smoking, and 
 had on the back the words, " This is the first attempt 
 at oil painting by G. Romney." Walker's connec- 
 tion links Romney with Shelley, for this ingenious 
 schoolmaster of Macclesfield lectured, on the advice 
 of Dr. Priestly, at London and Eton, where the 
 young poet attended his lectures.
 
 
 Biographical and Personal 15 
 
 outlines of Romney's early experience of life 
 in the metropolis. Horace Walpole tells us 
 that in the middle of the eighteenth century 
 there were in England as many as 2,000 
 portrait painters, and, of course, most of 
 these were settled in London. Who can doubt 
 that this young man passed many a hard 
 day, and often fell a victim to his perpetual 
 foe depression ? He arrived in London in 
 1762, and, in the following year, made an 
 effort to secure the prize offered by the 
 Society of Arts. The Seven Years' War 
 was nearly over, and, according to the 
 Gentleman's Magazine, the picture of the 
 Death of General Wolfe had been painted 
 before Romney left Kendal. He seems to 
 have been awarded the second prize of fifty 
 guineas, but, owing to the artist's represen- 
 tation of Wolfe wearing silk stockings on 
 the battle-field, and to certain inaccuracies 
 with regard to the regimentals of the soldiers, 
 the Committee reversed its decision, and, 
 awarding the fifty guineas to J. H. Mortimer, 
 gave Romney a consolation prize of twenty- 
 five guineas. Romney's friends held 
 Reynolds as largely responsible for this 
 reversal of judgment. At any rate, Romney
 
 16 Romney 
 
 had a suspicion that he owed his failure to 
 Reynolds, whom he regarded as his arch 
 enemy in the matter. To this incident, 
 therefore, can be traced that coldness which, 
 for the future, lay between these two great 
 painters. Sir Joshua would never allude to 
 Romney by name, but always called him, 
 in later times, " The man in Cavendish 
 Square." 
 
 Many a great genius has had to endure 
 years of hunger, and disappointment which 
 is worse than hunger, as he treads the thorny 
 path to fame. In his abode, first at Dove 
 Court, near the Mansion House, and later in 
 Bookbinder's Lane,* Romney seems to have 
 rapidly won that measure of fame that gave 
 him the necessary financial support for his 
 schemes. 
 
 These included the prospect of a visit to 
 Italy, the Holy Land of Art, the paradise 
 and inspiration of painters. Whereas other 
 men had journeyed thither easily in their 
 youth, Romney was obliged to wait until 
 
 * Subsequently Romney resided in Mews Gate, 
 Charing Cross ; Gray's Inn ; Great Newport Street ; 
 32, Cavendish Square (where he painted so often the 
 charms of Emma Hart) ; and Holly Bush House, 
 Hampstead.
 
 Biographical and Personal 17 
 
 he was nearly forty years of age for the 
 coveted opportunity. What loss this delay 
 may have meant for the British world of art, 
 we are utterly unable to conceive. Yet, 
 when we read of Romney's pictures selling 
 in recent times for fifty thousand pounds, 
 sincere regret mingles with indignation at 
 the thought of our national methods in 
 dealing with struggling genius. The same 
 age that suffered Chatterton to poison him- 
 self -allowed Romney with his heaven-sent 
 powers to toil day and night as a portrait 
 painter to keep body and soul together and 
 build up a fund sufficient for the visit to 
 that source from which alone true guidance 
 could be won for greater inspiration and 
 power. We must remember, also, that 
 periodically Romney's erratic brother Peter, 
 also a portrait painter, was a drain upon him, 
 materially embarrassing the financial situa- 
 tion. However, the neglect of Romney's 
 generation was nothing new in our history, 
 and has been too often repeated in later 
 times, so that it is superfluous to comment 
 further upon what Goldsmith discovered so 
 long ago. 
 
 After ten years of labour Romney had 
 
 c
 
 i8 
 
 achieved a reputation and an income. 
 Already, in 1764, he had visited France, 
 where he had studied in the Orleans Gallery, 
 and become acquainted with Joseph Vernet. 
 His house in Great Newport Street witnessed 
 the throng of London Society now seeking 
 the talent of the man who had become the 
 fashion, even to the detriment of Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds. The support given to the 
 Romney " faction " later on by Lord 
 Thurlow was a great asset in favour of the 
 lesser man ; but already his list of pictures 
 was imposing, and he was sought after by 
 eminent people. However, at this point 
 Romney was ready to risk all income, the 
 smiles of society, position in pursuit of his 
 great ideal. His abnormally rapid brush 
 had provided a substantial margin to his 
 income, and from this he drew for his sojourn 
 in Italy. It is impossible for the average 
 man to criticise the life and actions of a 
 genius like Romney. These, to be compre- 
 hended, must not be judged from ordinary 
 standpoints. 
 
 Just as he was about to start for Italy, in 
 company with Ozias Humphry, the 
 miniature painter, a fever prostrated
 
 Biographical and Personal 19 
 
 Romney for several months ; but at last, 
 in March, 1773, he set out with his friend, 
 taking with him a letter of introduction from 
 Charles Greville, second son of the Earl of 
 Warwick, to his uncle Sir William Hamilton, 
 ambassador at Naples. Of Romney's work 
 in Italy we shall have to speak elsewhere. 
 For the present let it suffice to say that the 
 period of his stay in Rome and elsewhere in 
 Italy saw this man, now approaching 
 middle-age, toiling incessantly, almost 
 tragically, to overtake time and snatch from 
 life those gifts which should have been within 
 his reach twenty years before. It was too 
 late. As we shall see, the visit did, indeed, 
 profoundly affect his subsequent work, but 
 it could not make up for the wasted years. 
 The artist who, it may be, was gifted, par 
 excellence, to produce creations of Fancy and 
 portray the facts of History, returned to 
 London, straitened by poverty, forced to 
 free brother Peter from debt, and, as it were, 
 start life anew amid financial embarrass- 
 ment. Hayley, pausing from the recollec- 
 tions of Rhymes of Art by Mr. Shee, the 
 later tenant of the house, tells us that when 
 Romney, at Christmas 1775, took possession
 
 20 
 
 of the house in Cavendish Square, he would 
 wake every morning with a painful appre- 
 hension of not finding business sufficient to 
 support him. " These fears," says this 
 poetic biographer (who has more than a 
 touch of certain characteristics of Harold 
 Skimpole) "were only early flutterings of 
 that incipient hypochondriacal disorder 
 which preyed in secret on his comfort 
 during many years." Were they? If so, 
 many another man has suffered from " that 
 incipient hypochondriacal disorder" which 
 the more fortunately situated " literary 
 squire " could not possibly understand. 
 
 But the financial clouds soon. lifted. The 
 list of sitters henceforth includes not only 
 the names of the fashionable, but also the 
 great and noble of our race. The un- 
 fortunate difference between Romney and 
 Reynolds kept the former outside the circle 
 of men who were developing the Royal 
 Academy, and to some extent away from 
 the comfort of royal patronage. Yet his 
 genius supported him in his attitude of 
 aloofness. 
 
 The Duke of Richmond sat to him, and 
 so successful was the portrait that at the
 
 Biographical and Personal 21 
 
 nobleman's request Romney painted Admiral 
 Keppel, Mr. Burke, Lord George Lennox, 
 the Hon. Mr. Darner, Lord John Cavendish, 
 and others. In days when royal patronage 
 meant so much he painted Mrs. Fitzherbert. 
 He writes to his son that Prince William has 
 given him a sitting, and, indeed, from these 
 years of his zenith almost till the end, 
 Romney's brilliant genius was fully recog- 
 nised not only by members of the Royal 
 Family, but by people so diverse in their 
 gifts as Garrick, Sir Hyde Parker, Gibbon, 
 and John Wesley. So far as one can judge 
 from biography, the fault of the estrange- 
 ment between Romney and Reynolds lay 
 quite as much with the latter as with 
 the former, and was based upon foolish 
 prejudice, dislike and jealousy. 
 
 About this time Romney made two 
 friendships which profoundly influenced his 
 life and genius. One, that of William 
 Hayley (a vain, but well-meaning poetaster 
 and literary " squire," who figures so often 
 and so unexpectedly, here and there, in late 
 i8th century life) originated in 1777, and, 
 undoubtedly swayed the great artist for 
 good and for ill to the end of his career ; the
 
 22 Romney 
 
 other, begun in 1782 and enduring also till 
 Romney's death, brought to him a source of 
 the deepest and most innocent delight 
 mingled with powerful inspiration. Those 
 who care to do so may trace the career of 
 Amy Lyon, alias Emma Hart, from the 
 position of maidservant up to the time when 
 she figured as the mistress of the Honourable 
 Charles Greville, favourite nephew of Sir 
 William Hamilton. 
 
 During this first stage of her life came 
 the period during which she served as a 
 living advertisement to the quack Doctor 
 Graham. He recommended the frequent 
 use of mud baths ; and Vestina, or the 
 Goddess of Health, with her hair elaborately 
 dressed with powder, flowers and feathers, 
 and wearing two ropes of pearls on her naked 
 neck and bust, personified Hygeia in 
 Graham's Temple of Health in the Adelphi. 
 She used also to be immersed in the mud 
 bath and the public paid a shilling a head to 
 see the immersion, or, if they pleased, five 
 shillings to view the emersion ! After she had 
 left Graham's service, he gathered the public 
 in Pall Mall by the display and employment 
 of his grand celestial bed, which, fitted with
 
 Biographical and Personal 23 
 
 its electrical apparatus and richly hung.stood 
 upon its glass legs in full public view. 
 
 From Greville's protection Emma passed 
 (against her will, and, indeed, without her 
 knowledge) to the possession of his august 
 uncle, and formed then a liaison that ended 
 in matrimony. Their married life from the 
 days of its association with the author of 
 Vathek, William Beckford (who bought 
 Romney's Indian Woman to hang in the hall 
 of his fantastic palace-villa at Fon thill), and 
 throughout the glitter of the days of the 
 court at Naples where Nelson came on the 
 scene, right up to the final moment, when, 
 with our greatest sailor holding his hand, 
 and with Lady Hamilton at the bedside, 
 Sir William died at his house in Piccadilly 
 forms, in conjunction with Emma's former 
 career, an almost fantastic romance. One 
 consideration only was paramount with 
 Romney. To him, an artist, this woman 
 came as a ray of light in a forest, wakening 
 into beauty by its illuminating presence 
 myriad forms of life which before lay un- 
 revealed. Scandal, after the usual fashion, 
 dealt vilely and cruelly with this association. 
 Mrs. Grundy came into life towards the end
 
 24 Romney 
 
 of the i8th century, and was born as an 
 adult endowed with maturest powers. The 
 world seems ever waiting for such bait, like 
 some vicious pike in a weedy pool. Yet we 
 have no evidence whatever that Romney's 
 delight in his new sitter was other than that 
 of the artist in an inspiring model, or that 
 his friendship was not akin to a fatherly 
 interest. At the moment of their first 
 meeting he was forty-eight years of age, and 
 she was about nineteen. One thing is 
 certain. Whenever she set foot in his studio 
 Romney's genius blazed into splendour. 
 Just as with many a man before and since, 
 the genius of George Romney was vivified 
 by feminine influence. It may be that a 
 regretful sorrow, due to the difference in 
 their ages and the irksome ties that fettered 
 him, added to the charm of the association. 
 Portraits and sketches followed one another 
 in rapid succession. Commissions were 
 refused ; the number of his sitters was 
 reduced that he might absorb himself in his 
 work for his " divine lady." He painted 
 her in a series of studies, as Circe, Alope, 
 Cassandra, Euphrosyne, Joan of Arc, 
 Calypso, the Magdalene, and so on, till her
 
 Biographical and Personal 25 
 
 last portrait a half-length just before her 
 marriage in 1791, with Sir William Hamilton. 
 When she left England, depression lowered 
 over the artist's faculties. He painted, and 
 painted powerfully, but a settled gloom lay 
 upon him mentally and physically. When 
 she returned, his soul revived, and then once 
 again inspiration poured through brain and 
 finger-tips. There is no need to attempt to 
 offer explanation. Biography can match 
 the phenomena again and again. 
 
 It was during one of his annual visits to 
 Eartham, in Sussex, the residence of William 
 Hayley, that George Romney met William 
 Cowper. Cowper and Hayley were drawn 
 together by the resolve of certain men in 
 those days to edit Milton's works. Hayley 
 had been engaged by Alderman Boydell to 
 write Milton's life. Cowper had also been 
 mentioned as a possible author, and Hayley 
 was distressed to think that he might enter 
 into rivalry with William Cowper. He sent 
 the poet a sonnet, visited him at Weston in 
 1791, and Cowper returned the visit the 
 next year coming thus into the group of 
 remarkable people, such as Gibbon, Thurlow, 
 Flaxman, Miss Seward, Romnev, and Blake,
 
 26 Romney 
 
 who were in the habit of visiting William 
 Hayley at Eartham. Undoubtedly Hayley 
 possessed amiable qualities. For Cowper 
 and Romney, mind was attracted by mind 
 and bent by bent. These two men found 
 many similarities in each other. Romney 
 was susceptible to feminine attraction and 
 sympathy ; so, perhaps, quite as much was 
 Cowper. The artist was inspired to work by 
 the loveliness of Emma Hart ; the poet 
 wrote under the inspiration of Theodora, his 
 cousin ; Mrs. Unwin, the youthful widow 
 who mothered him ; or of Lady Austen, the 
 charming, sprightly guest at Olney. Both 
 men suffered alike from deep mental 
 depression . Romney was now experiencing, 
 by reason of approaching age and the fierce 
 flames of mental and spiritual ardour, the 
 darkness of a despair which Cowper had, to 
 his cost, known periodically from childhood. 
 Romney's picture of Cowper and Cowper's 
 sonnet to Romney signify the manner in 
 which these two artists met each other. 
 
 The decline of Romney's powers dates 
 from the moment of Emma Hamilton's 
 departure. In the year 1791, the symptoms 
 increased and developed. There were
 
 Biographical and Personal 27 
 
 periods of revival. Rest and change pro- 
 duced temporary recovery ; but extravagant 
 schemes for pictures designed upon a huge 
 scale and his wild fancy for planning an 
 enormous house are symptomatic of 
 disease. 
 
 Intermingled with such fits were 
 depression, irritation, and gloom* which 
 suggest the triumphal emergence of mental 
 forces that in their pre-natal stage had given 
 rise to the haunting pathos one finds in the 
 original portrait painted by himself. His 
 son persuaded him to be content with the 
 purchase of a house on Holly Bush Hill, 
 Hampstead. The house in Cavendish 
 Square was leased to Mr. Archer Shee, then 
 rising into fame. A visit to Eartham, in 
 1796, caused a renewal of energy ; but in 
 the following two years the cloud of despon- 
 dency settled finally, never to be lifted. 
 
 Oppressed with failing sight, numbness of 
 the hands, and a continual dizziness, the 
 giant (by reason of his tremendous aptitude 
 for work as well as for his genius, one thinks 
 of him as a giant) relinquished the struggle 
 
 * See the quotation from The Gentleman's Magazine 
 on page n of this book.
 
 28 Romney 
 
 to return to Mary Romney, who for so many 
 years had been content to watch supinely 
 her husband's splendid career. As we have 
 no wish to dilate upon the subject of their 
 separation, it is as well to state once and for 
 all the impression that a modern reader 
 gathers from the material at his disposal. 
 All Romney's biographers deal with the 
 subject ; some at length, others more 
 briefly ; some with sympathy born of com- 
 passion ; others with outspoken harshness 
 due to lack of understanding. 
 
 We believe that Mary Romney acquiesced 
 in the wise separation that left her husband 
 free to follow the relentless call of genius. 
 Year by year he continued to contribute a 
 generous sum for the upkeep of his family ; 
 he visited the north from time to time ; he 
 was in constant correspondence with his son, 
 John Romney, who in order to rectify 
 Hayley's biography* wrote subsequently 
 
 * Hayley commissioned William Blake while he 
 was at Felpham to collect the material for this life 
 and to trace all the scattered pictures. Blake's 
 correspondence with Hayley shows that his heart 
 was in the work and throws much light upon the 
 question of the possession of the pictures at that 
 time.
 
 Biographical and Personal 29 
 
 such a sympathetic account of his father's 
 life. Mrs. Romney realised, no doubt, that 
 she was in every respect unqualified to 
 support her part in the unequal partnership. 
 Their marriage had been hurried, altogether 
 unwise, and at the period of uncompre- 
 hending youth. 
 
 To anyone who has striven to understand 
 the inner life and temperament of George 
 Romney, the vulgar and ignorant outcry 
 against his association with Emma Hart 
 brings a sense of heaviness and sadness. 
 Beauty to him was as essential as the 
 sunlight to the flower. He was as God 
 made him. The word-picture of Romney, 
 "listening to the twanging of Hayley's 
 lyre, and turning a deaf ear to the cry of the 
 poor woman fading and pining away, alone 
 and deserted in the north," is as ludicrous 
 as it is unjust and untrue. From Tennyson 
 down to the author just quoted* all such 
 over-zealous searchers for immoral causes 
 are frequently wrong in their suspicions, and 
 still more flagrantly wrong in their interpre- 
 tation of the man and his art. One wishes 
 
 * Dutton Cook in 'Romney and his Paintings' 
 in Once a Week, xvii., pp. 228, 260 (August, 1867).
 
 30 Romney 
 
 sincerely that the great Poet Laureate had 
 not so abused his powers as to pen the false 
 sentiment that breathes throughout 
 " Romney 's Remorse." The tone of the 
 poem rings falsely ; the argument is based 
 upon as culpable a biography as was ever 
 written.* 
 
 Why should Tennyson pounce upon 
 Romney and pass by Shakespeare, whose 
 behaviour was equally open to criticism ? 
 The answer is that even Victorian prudery 
 dared not assail the greater name. We much 
 prefer the words of a feminine biographer with 
 reference to George Romney :f " And now 
 we come to the closing lines in the memoir 
 of George Romney. The aim has been to tell 
 the story of his life as he lived it : and though 
 we miss the homely figure of the north- 
 country wife from the scenes where poets 
 reigned, there is no incident that proves that 
 it was otherwise than agreeable to her. She 
 may never have desired to join him in 
 London. To do so in those days meant the 
 
 * " One of the most tiresome books ever written 
 in memory of an eminent man " (Ward & Roberts, 
 
 P 55)- 
 
 t Hilda Gamlin : George Romney and his Art.
 
 Biographical and Personal 31 
 
 severance of accustomed friendships dearer 
 than any attraction that could be offered 
 from an untried world. She is said to have 
 been a woman of great good sense, and, no 
 doubt, had an instinctive dread that she 
 would be out of her sphere in an element of 
 learning that surrounded her husband. She 
 and their only living child were well provided 
 for by him, and the link of affection was un- 
 broken, though they lived so far apart." 
 
 At any rate, the " poor woman in the 
 north " faded and pined away so very slowly 
 that she lived to the age of ninety-six, dying 
 in 1823, and surviving her husband by 
 twenty-one years. It is stated that an aged 
 servant who died fairly recently remembered 
 the old lady well, and asserted that her 
 temper was bad. Let us pass by the 
 separation, and see the return of the artist, 
 and Mary Romney bending to the task of 
 soothing her husband's last years. In his 
 letter of December, 1800, George Romney 
 says to Lady Hamilton, " I feel every day 
 greater need of care and attention, and here 
 I experience them in the highest degree." 
 
 The return of his brother James, who held 
 the rank of Colonel in the East India Com-
 
 32 Romney 
 
 pany's Service, failed to rouse George 
 Romney from the mental coma into which 
 he had now sunk. With a brother's love he 
 had yearned for this re-union, but now that 
 it was fulfilled he failed to recognise the 
 object of a life's affection. After a long and 
 earnest gaze he " burst into an agony of 
 tears," and lapsed into complete insensi- 
 bility to all around him. He passed away 
 on the I5th November, 1802, having reached 
 the age of sixty-eight years. 
 
 The best concerted schemes men lay for fame 
 Die fast away ; only themselves die faster. 
 
 He lies buried in the churchyard of Dal ton, 
 his native town. John Romney wished to 
 raise a monument in the church to the 
 memory of the great artist, but Lord George 
 Cavendish, the lay rector, refused to grant 
 permission. The monument was transferred 
 to Kendal, where Romney had breathed his 
 last. As we have seen, Mrs. Romney died 
 at the age of ninety-six, in April, 1823. Sir 
 Herbert Maxwell safely conjectures that 
 " hers was not the fiery temperament that 
 swiftly consumes its mortal envelope."
 
 Biographical and Personal 33 
 
 To this brief biography of George Romney 
 it is necessary to add a few remarks as to his 
 appearance, character, and disposition. Tail, 
 with dark hair, and broad strong features, 
 his eyes denoting a spirituality and power 
 behind them, the artist appears to have been 
 capable of persistent and intensive labour, 
 and, through his exalted genius, of develop- 
 ing the intellect that had suffered so much 
 from lack of early education. Inheriting 
 his father's ability, he felt drawn to art 
 rather than to music, and he found his true 
 happiness in the expression of his thought, 
 feeling, and sentiment in his wonderful 
 pictures. He was an affable and tactful 
 friend with qualities that won for him the 
 deep affection of men like Cowper, Blake, 
 Adam Walker, Ozias Humphry, Cumber- 
 land. They all loved him, and the last- 
 mentioned says that " envy never drew a 
 word from his lips in disparagement of a 
 contemporary." Lord Chancellor Thurlow 
 and Gibbon the historian, in a different 
 category, held him in high esteem. One 
 even seems to hear in the words of the aged 
 John Wesley a tone of more than admiration 
 as he speaks of the artist and his powers. 
 D
 
 34 Roniney 
 
 Romney's pitying and generous nature 
 prompted him to love children and they in 
 return loved him a splendid tribute ! 
 None but a lover of children would have 
 been vouchsafed the shy yet trusting gaze 
 with which his portraits of them greet us, as 
 the living children themselves greeted him. 
 None but an inspired painter of children 
 could have devised a method all his own to 
 transfer the naive directness of that gaze to 
 his canvas, the single brush-stroke of warm 
 colour that forms the shadow of the lashless 
 upper eyelid, a device that is well seen in the 
 portrait of a Lady and Child in the National 
 Gallery, or in the charming picture of the 
 eight-year-old Miss Casson, painted in 1781, 
 and lately re-discovered by Mr. Kaines 
 Smith.* The same generosity led him to 
 pour out money like water to alleviate 
 material troubles, as, for example, when he 
 paid 200 to save his landlord at Pineapple 
 
 * This picture, which the Diary shows to have 
 been painted on the I5th, iQth, aist and 22nd April, 
 1781, and which is described as a three-quarter- 
 length in the Rough Lists of John Romney, is 
 entered without further description in the Catalogue 
 Raisonni of Ward & Roberts. It is now repro- 
 duced for the first time by kind permission of Mrs. 
 F. Davies, the owner.

 
 Biographical and Personal 35 
 
 Court, Kilburn, from financial disaster. He 
 lived in seclusion ; with the exception of 
 Reynolds he appears to have had no 
 enemies ; he loved to help those of his calling 
 who were less successful than himself ; he 
 walked along the path of life, seeing and 
 loving the glories of nature, himself a simple 
 child of nature, and was content to devote 
 himself to humble imitations of nature's 
 beauty. All his days he lived worthily as 
 the son of the man who had won for himself 
 the noble title of " honest John Romney." 
 Unspoiled by success, attentive, while 
 his faculties remained, to the exacting 
 claims of his dear mistress, Art, somewhat 
 timid and nervous in his humble attitude 
 towards life as a whole, unable, except at 
 moments when he was deeply stirred, to 
 express himself as befittingly in words as he 
 could in colour, Romney, apart from his own 
 temperament, seems to have suffered two 
 great hardships in life one, the necessity 
 imposed upon him of perpetually dealing 
 with sitters instead of ranging fancy-free in 
 the glory of the spiritual realm ; and the 
 other, that at the time of his death no true 
 and sympathetic account of his career was
 
 36 Romney 
 
 given forthwith to the world, but that his 
 first biography was spoken by the irrespon- 
 sible, clacking tongue of the phrase-hunter, 
 William Hayley.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 TRAINING AND ASSOCIATION WITH ARTISTS. 
 
 ROMNEY'S portrait of himself represents a 
 man on whose face the vital characteristics 
 are written by the soul within. We are 
 aware of a certain peevishness that seems to 
 blend with every other quality, spreading 
 over the features to such a degree that one 
 asks oneself whether the tendency was 
 inborn, or whether the incidents of life 
 developed this dominant trait. 
 
 We are all likely to err in an attempt to 
 form a personal estimate of ourselves ; and 
 at first our thought suggests that Romney 
 read into his character what seemed to him 
 to be the prevalent mood of his life. But 
 the man was not simply an ordinary reader 
 of character and a student of physiognomy ; 
 he was pre-eminently an artist ; and such a 
 prejudice on the part of his judgment would 
 most certainly be corrected by the pene- 
 
 37
 
 38 Romney 
 
 tration of the artist's vision. To stand 
 before a portrait of a great artist painted by 
 himself is either to behold a candid revela- 
 tion on the part of the workman, or else to 
 behold a deliberate, conscious concealment 
 of unpleasant or weak elements in the face. 
 In such a portrait, the artist takes almost the 
 standpoint of God, who " looketh not as 
 man looketh," for, in this instance, he knows 
 the soul behind the face ; he sees the heart as 
 distinct from the form ; the subject of the 
 picture is the most vital to him of all 
 subjects ; for it is himself. 
 
 One feels before this portrait that Romney 
 gives us honestly and deliberately himself, 
 and the beholder prefers to judge the man 
 from his personal estimate, before he trusts 
 to the unintentional deception of the printed 
 page. In this respect Romney is fortunate 
 where others are doomed unheard to con- 
 demnation. Whatever man may say of 
 him, here, at least, is his character, written, 
 as it were, by his own hand, and accordingly 
 one draws nearer to this unfinished record to 
 read anew the man and his life as it showed 
 when eight-and-forty years had definitely set 
 their mark upon brow, and mouth, and eye.
 
 Training and Association 39 
 
 The mouth and eyes tell most. The 
 former seems almost to smile at the spec- 
 tator, suggesting a fund of humour and 
 pleasantry. The eyes check the impression 
 given by the mouth, and rouse a sense of 
 sympathy, even of pity, in one who looks 
 deeply into them. Under their arched and 
 somewhat projecting brows, they are the 
 very doorway to the soul within, but they 
 speak to us of no peaceful, restful inner 
 realm. They seem actually to suggest the 
 dark years to come and to tell plainly of a 
 dreamland far removed from the hard and 
 material age in which this artist moved. 
 The hair above the high and spacious brow 
 is still plentiful, with a tendency to curl, 
 but a hint of greyness proclaims full 
 maturity. 
 
 The firm, full chin denotes strength of 
 purpose ; yet the mouth is not resolute, but 
 rather whimsical, with laughter not far 
 away. One begins to inquire, " Where, then, 
 does this peevishness lie ? " There can be 
 no doubt that it hovers around the lips and 
 mouth. A sense of duality arises from them. 
 One can imagine an April mood within. 
 Certain little lines, shades, hints, speak of a
 
 4O Romney 
 
 prevalent mood, hidden at present by play- 
 fulness, but ready to break forth. In life 
 his face must have resembled in its change- 
 fulness the surface of one of Romney 's 
 mountain meres. 
 
 Such is a reading of Romney's face, and 
 the student bears it in mind as he traces the 
 hesitating steps of the biographers of the 
 past. The face, somehow, haunts one with 
 its wistfulness, its dream, and its friendli- 
 ness. If only one could have known the 
 man and have questioned him ! Just as 
 with Charles Lamb, to whom we have 
 referred somewhere earlier in this book, so 
 with Romney, it is the life in the eye that 
 attracts and holds. Surely those eyes, when 
 living, possessed a wonderful power and 
 depth. One desires earnestly that some 
 contemporary of Romney's would speak of 
 the message that sped triumphant from the 
 soul within the gaze to the very hearts of his 
 associates. One readily accepts the state- 
 ment that in company with friends he would 
 sit long, absorbed in thought, absent from 
 all around him, till, starting suddenly from 
 his seat, he would give vent to effusions of 
 fancy, and harangue upon the subject of his
 
 Training and Association 41 
 
 art with a sublimity of idea and a peculiarity 
 of expressive language entirely his own, but 
 in which education and reading had no 
 share. On such occasions he held his 
 audience enrapt, as, in a hurried accent and 
 an elevated tone, with tears starting from his 
 eyes, he poured out sallies of natural and 
 unaffected genius. 
 
 As we have seen, Romney missed the 
 advantages of early education. We repeat, 
 very deliberately, advantages rather than 
 disadvantages, for it would appear that all 
 through his life there was a world of fantasy 
 within him that lacked expression. His 
 pictures, indeed, attract the beholder, but 
 to the student of human nature his one 
 picture of himself makes a greater appeal 
 with its sad suggestion of that realm of 
 imagination lying behind the artist's eyes. 
 His consciousness of his early lack of edu- 
 cation kept him from the tables of the great 
 with the exception of Lord Thurlow's, for 
 the Lord Chancellor and old schoolfellow of 
 William Cowper, knowing the greatness of 
 the heart as well as the talent of his friend, 
 and, honouring Romney with his particular 
 notice, most probably exercised befitting
 
 42 Romney 
 
 tact. John Flaxman tells us that " a 
 peculiar shyness kept him from association 
 with all public bodies, and led to the pursuit 
 of his studies in retirement and solitude 
 which allowed him more time for observa- 
 tion, reflection, and the exercise of his skill in 
 other arts connected with his own. And, 
 indeed, few artists since the fifteenth 
 century have been able to do so much in so 
 many branches ; for, besides his beautiful 
 compositions, pictures which have added to 
 the knowledge and celebrity of the English 
 School, he modelled like a sculptor, carved 
 ornaments in wood with great delicacy, and 
 could make an architectural design in a fine 
 taste, as well as construct every part of the 
 building." 
 
 Here then was a man who was ready to 
 leave all and follow art simply for art's sake, 
 a man who sought to draw from the sources 
 of inspiration within himself rather than 
 from the sources that lay without. How- 
 ever, so intricate is human life that even the 
 most exclusive member of society cannot 
 stand entirely alone. George Romney's 
 existence seems to be a protest against con- 
 ventionality : and yet it is but one of the
 
 Training and Association 43 
 
 many threads that go to form the general 
 pattern of the age to which he belonged. 
 Still, in his case it is the more difficult to 
 assign to this or that influence in his life any 
 special feature of his art. It seems beyond 
 question that, up to the age of twenty-one, 
 his bent had free and entirely unrestrained 
 control, seeking its sustenance from the 
 splendid natural world around him, copying 
 from Leonardo's Treatise on Painting, and 
 responding to the encouragement of discern- 
 ing but unqualified friendly criticism. After 
 his apprenticeship to Steele, in March, 1755, 
 it would seem that he but exchanged un- 
 restricted liberty for a "studio drudgery," 
 which was useful for its lessons of persistent 
 application and ah 1 that he learned of the 
 mixing of pigments. If the story of Laurence 
 Sterne's admiration of young Romney's 
 talent were true (it was reported by Cumber- 
 land, but denied by Hayley), one might 
 readily infer that already the apprentice 
 displayed a talent but little likely to profit 
 by the instructions of an ordinary master. 
 But the brief association between Steele 
 and Romney, cannot, to say the least, have 
 been of great benefit to the young genius,
 
 44 
 
 and its termination left him again unaided, 
 but free to carry on his work as a portrait 
 painter at Lancaster. In that town his 
 talent won the sympathy and appreciation 
 of certain influential local people, especially 
 of Mr. Walter Strickland of Sizergh, who not 
 only employed him to paint family portraits, 
 but also permitted him to range at liberty 
 among his collection of pictures. 
 
 At this period Romney set himself to copy 
 from a series of prints after the Dutch 
 masters, and it was from the sum realised by 
 the raffling of these oil copies and pasticci, 
 some twenty in all, including two scenes 
 from King Lear and one from Tristram 
 Shandy, that the young man was able to 
 build up his slender savings to the sum of 
 one hundred pounds. 
 
 Is it an exaggeration to say that, up to 
 this point in his life, George Romney stands 
 before us as an artist who, remote from great 
 art collections and the great works of art, 
 set himself the responsible task of self- 
 tuition ? Yet, in the circumstances of his 
 life, what else could have been the case ? 
 Until the days of Reynolds there was in 
 England no school of painting ; and the
 
 Training and Association 45 
 
 only inducement likely to bring artists to 
 these shores was the profit to be gained from 
 portrait-painting. The art of landscape- 
 painting came comparatively late in the day. 
 If Romney had been reared in London he 
 would have lost the quiet, but long-enduring 
 lessons of nature in her wildest, loveliest 
 moods, and what could London have offered 
 him in nature's place ? Even Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds' earlier life offers but a similar sort 
 of training to Romney's, different as his 
 associations chanced to be. We find the 
 young Reynolds copying Guercino, becoming 
 apprenticed to Thomas Hudson, quarrelling 
 with and leaving his master. It was not until 
 he was twenty-six years of age that his meet- 
 ing with Commodore Keppel gave Joshua 
 Reynolds that opportunity to travel which 
 he employed so diligently and effectively. 
 
 Romney left the North for London when 
 he was about twenty-eight years of age. 
 Reynolds returned to London from Italy 
 when he was twenty-nine. The comparison 
 is entirely to the disadvantage of Romney 
 in the matter of opportunity. While he had 
 been struggling to save the little sum 
 necessary for the support of his family and
 
 46 Romney 
 
 himself, the artist whom he was destined to 
 rival had flourished amid the sunshine of the 
 glorious, leisured life of Italy, with all her 
 stores of wealth in art and culture. Now, 
 almost contemporaneously, they settled in 
 London. How different in status ! 
 Reynolds in Sir James Thornhill's old house 
 in St. Martin's Lane, and acquainted with 
 those who could, at his request, open up 
 aristocratic society for him ; Romney, 
 possessed of his little fraction of the 100, 
 and with but two friends in the whole 
 of London both north-countrymen, Mr. 
 Braithwaite, of the Post Office, and Mr. 
 Greene, an attorney at Gray's Inn. How 
 amazingly does Romney's talent triumph 
 in these conditions ! One thinks of the 
 youthful Shakespeare in lowly capacity at a 
 London Theatre, and the University Wits ; 
 one recalls the contemporary figure of Oliver 
 Goldsmith, and the coldness of an indifferent 
 society. Then one turns to see Romney 
 toiling for ten long years before he can go to 
 visit that sunny land which held so much 
 his genius longed to behold and study at 
 first-hand. 
 Those ten years witnessed unremitting
 
 Training and Association 47 
 
 toil at portrait-painting, but they provided 
 very slight means of study save that which 
 could be snatched from labour necessary for 
 life's needs. Charles Lamb tells us that he 
 was chained to " the desk's dead wood." 
 Romney exclaims to Hay ley : " This cursed 
 portrait-painting. How I am shackled with 
 it."* Yet, in 1760 London witnessed the 
 first public exhibition by British artists in 
 the rooms of the Society of Arts in the 
 Strand ; the next year there were two 
 exhibitions one at the Society of Arts, 
 afterwards enrolled as the Free Society of 
 Arts, the other at Spring Gardens, and 
 known later as the Incorporated Society of 
 Artists. London could at least offer Romney 
 a view of contemporary art, and his journey 
 to Paris, in September, 1764, enabled him to 
 visit exhibitions and see the art treasures of 
 palaces and churches in short, all those 
 places where he could study the old masters. 
 
 * He must, however, have had ample opportunity 
 of experiencing the " joy of others " at his power 
 displayed through this cursed art. Richard Cumber- 
 land, the playwright, was so delighted with his 
 portrait, that he wrote verses extolling Romney's 
 praise. Dr. Johnson praised these verses and told 
 Reynolds probably not to his pleasure 'that the 
 poem would bring Romney's name before the public.
 
 48 Romney 
 
 Having free access to the Orleans gallery, 
 he passed much of his time there, being 
 greatly delighted with the pictures of Le 
 Sueur. Six brief weeks of freedom, with the 
 first real chance of his life to study where he 
 pleased ! He was now about thirty years 
 of age.* 
 
 " Romney, shy, retiring, studious and 
 contemplative, conscious of all the dis- 
 advantages of a stinted education, of a habit 
 naturally hypochondriac, with aspen nerves 
 that every breath could ruffle, was at once 
 in art the rival and in nature the contrast 
 of Sir Joshua." These are the words of 
 Richard Cumberland,! one of Romney's first 
 patrons a man who gave him ten guineas 
 
 *As we shall see elsewhere, his opinion of con- 
 temporary French art was far from high. " The 
 taste for painting and the art itself are at the lowest 
 ebb ; simplicity they call vulgar, and pure elegance 
 passes for gravity and heaviness. Everything must 
 be done with the air of a dancer or an actor. . . . 
 They are a people that have no idea of simplicity, 
 and are totally devoid of character and feeling." 
 He instances their degeneracy by their indifference 
 to the great masters of the past. 
 
 f Richard Cumberland figures in Sheridan's Critic 
 as Sir Fretful Plagiary. He was suspected of being 
 the person who hissed at Tony Lumpkin just as 
 Goldsmith was entering at the fifth act of She 
 Stoops to Conquer.
 
 National Portrait Caller) 
 
 George Romney
 
 Training and Association 49 
 
 instead of the desired eight for a three- 
 quarter portrait, took Garrick to see it, and 
 won from Garrick, the great friend of 
 Reynolds, praise and sympathetic advice. 
 One thinks of Romney's face in that portrait 
 of himself, and believes that much of what 
 Cumberland says is true ; but one misses in 
 the description at least three features the 
 iron determination underlying the artist's 
 lips, the delicate winsome humour that 
 plays so lightly on those lips, and the dream 
 world in those haunting eyes. The Society 
 of Arts awarded him a consolation prize for 
 The Death of General Wolfe, giving the first 
 and second prizes to other competitors 
 deemed more worthy. It is clear that seven 
 years before this Romney had his ideas of 
 Reynolds' work ; for he says in a letter 
 written when he was twenty-three and 
 offering criticism upon his own critics : 
 " The first sort that presents itself are those 
 who, having, perhaps, read some flimsy 
 French authors on taste, heard of Hogarth's 
 line of beauty, and seen a few of Reynolds' 
 prints, condemn all pictures that are not 
 twisted, loose and careless." Now, he 
 suspects Reynolds of influencing the judges
 
 50 Romney 
 
 in their decision, and for ever afterwards 
 these two are separated, and their respective 
 followers are the devotees of the one or the 
 other. " All the town," said Lord Thurlow, 
 " is divided into two factions, the Reynolds 
 and the Romney, and I am of the Romney 
 faction." 
 
 In Romney one finds a sturdy British 
 independence. There appears to be no 
 necessity to seek for ill-will either on the side 
 of Reynolds, or of Romney. Aloofness, 
 divergence of view, opposition of personality 
 these may have been, and probably were, 
 factors in the lack of fellowship ; but if one 
 were obliged to seek for the reason for the 
 marked aversion, it would be to Romney 
 one would turn first rather than to Reynolds. 
 There is a quality in certain Celtic tempera- 
 ments that would gladly accompany its 
 possessor to the gutter and .death before it 
 would yield one iota in the way of admiring 
 inferiority, or bend the knee to position and 
 rank. It is quite possible that Romney 
 possessed that quality, which many a man 
 possesses even in these latter days. But, if 
 that were so, it is reasonable to suppose that, 
 over and above such a bias, he had views of
 
 Training and Association 51 
 
 his own with regard to art, and was deter- 
 mined to uphold his opinion even though by 
 so doing he shut himself off from royal 
 patronage and the favour of the great. 
 Persistently he refused to send his pictures 
 to the Royal Academy, and it was not until 
 1871 that any of his work was exhibited by 
 that august body. 
 
 Was this the petulance of " a weak, ill- 
 balanced and over-emotional man " ? Was 
 it due to the advice of the meddlesome 
 Hayley ? A man may suffer perpetually 
 from the pen of a biographer. Every 
 discriminating person knows that accurate, 
 honest, and candid biography, more 
 commonly met with nowadays than formerly, 
 has been one of the rarest things to find in 
 our literature. Again, one claims that the 
 explanation of Romney's attitude would 
 appear to be more easily found written upon 
 his portrait than within the covers of the 
 biographies of Hayley, or of John Romney. 
 The man who, in matrimony, took that 
 decided step which left his life free for the 
 pursuit of Art was certainly no weakling ; 
 and at the age of thirty-five he divorced 
 himself from the little group of influential
 
 52 Romney 
 
 men who might have furthered his material 
 interests. Almost at the same period of his 
 life he relinquished his practice, and, giving 
 up all, went to Italy to study art for art's 
 sake. One feels grateful to him for leaving 
 a standard whereby we may check the 
 judgments of those biographers who actually 
 knew him in the flesh, as well as of the many 
 who have drawn more or less from those 
 original contributions. If the unfinished 
 portrait of himself, by himself, may be 
 accepted as a true and definite represen- 
 tation of his physiognomy, one asserts, with 
 confidence, that the word " weak " may be 
 ruled out from any account of this painter's 
 temperament. 
 
 " Mr. Romney was the maker of his own 
 fortune and, inasmuch as he allowed him- 
 self not sufficient leisure to execute many 
 designs which the fertility of his genius con- 
 ceived, may be said so far to have been more 
 attentive to that than to his fame. Whilst 
 his mind was pregnant with magnificent 
 ideas, and his rooms and passages loaded 
 with unfinished portraits, he had not 
 resolution to turn away a newcomer. . . . 
 If, therefore, it was the love of gain that
 
 Training and Association 53 
 
 operated on him upon these occasions, it was 
 a principle that counteracted its own 
 object ; but there was also a weakness in his 
 nature that could never make a stand 
 against importunity of any sort ; he was a 
 man of a most gentle temper, with most 
 irritable nerves. He was constantly pro- 
 jecting great undertakings for the honour of 
 his art, and at the same time involving 
 himself in new engagements to render them 
 impracticable."* 
 
 In this brief extract from an obscure 
 source we get the text for the remaining 
 years of this great painter's life. We may 
 in all fairness repudiate the love of money 
 for money's sake ; we may, all the more 
 readily, seize upon the statement that his 
 mind was pregnant with magnificent ideas 
 most of which never came to birth. 
 
 Here was a man who made his own 
 fortune. At the age of thirty-eight he left 
 his already lucrative position of a fashionable 
 painter, wholly abandoned the field to his 
 rivals, and spent three years from the 
 autumn of 1772 to the winter of 1775 
 
 * Lancashire Biographical History, Some Account 
 of George Romney.
 
 54 Romney 
 
 seeking true guidance and genuine inspiration 
 from the heart of Italy. So far as we can 
 judge, it was just the same in Italy as else- 
 where. He studied, lived in seclusion, and 
 worked closely at his copies of the Masters, 
 being profoundly inspired by antique 
 sculpture. His diligence knew no inter- 
 mission. He was aware that he lacked 
 style ; he had hitherto toiled for a livelihood. 
 These three years must have fled all too 
 rapidly, but they fed his nature, corrected 
 his views of art, fostered the innate world of 
 fancy while at the same time they developed 
 and refined his taste. For the future he 
 determined to try to achieve grandeur and 
 simplicity. Mr. William Roberts, answering 
 Mr. Justice Darling, said : " I prefer the 
 earlier period part after Romney came back 
 from Italy. I think the earlier period much 
 more attractive than the later period because 
 it is more spontaneous. I regard the period 
 soon after he came back from Italy as 
 Romney's best period."* 
 
 Impressions received in early life endure ; 
 the experience of later life sows seeds that 
 
 * The Cult of Old Paintings and the Romney Case : 
 R. W. Lloyd, p. r 80.
 
 Training and Association 55 
 
 strike no deep root. If Romney had visited 
 Italy in the early twenties of his life, we 
 should have had in him a genius capable of 
 giving far more than portraits of his con- 
 temporaries. If Romney had lived in the 
 following century, we should possess, in all 
 probability, splendid traces of his fertile 
 imagination. As it was, he returned from 
 Italy to rival Reynolds, but was unable to 
 find the true outlet for his transcendent con- 
 ceptions. " A child of nature who had never 
 seen or heard of anything that could kindle 
 his genius, or urge him to emulation, and 
 who became a painter without a proto- 
 type " he seems to have owed but little to 
 association with his confreres, but much to 
 the heaven-sent gift within him. We are 
 struck, as we follow his life, at the display of 
 true taste and judgment which were not 
 brought to him by education but by the 
 genius that guided his destiny. Time after 
 time he turns to the pages of Shakespeare 
 and Milton to find in those great thinkers 
 and singers the talisman that shall unlock 
 his own genius and liberate the mute im- 
 prisoned pageant which yearned to trace its 
 passage over the canvas. If he had been
 
 56 Romney 
 
 tree to follow fancy, he would gladly have 
 escaped from the necessity of making 
 money. But he was utterly unbusinesslike, 
 and, moreover, his attempts along the lines 
 of pure imagination were sporadic and 
 desultory. Yet a cursory glance at the 
 subjects of his many pictures will show how 
 frequently he made an effort to leave con- 
 vention and develop originality ; an 
 examination of the pictures themselves, 
 whenever one gets the good fortune to see 
 such works, suggests powerfully the presence 
 of a genius that might have been transcen- 
 dent in realms of powerful imaginative 
 conception. Romney's ability to depict 
 airy lightness comes out, perhaps, most 
 clearly in the beautiful group of the Gower 
 children, and this portrait, by reason of its 
 arcadian charm and ease, also exemplifies 
 the debt he owed to the lessons he learned 
 from Italy. In his encouragement of 
 Boydell's attempt to establish an English 
 School of Historical Painting we see his deep 
 desire to do work of this nature ; and it was 
 not Romney's fault that the fiery outbreak 
 of the French Revolution hopelessly 
 destroyed the scheme. As it was, in the
 
 Training and Association 57 
 
 days before the great revival of interest in 
 Shakespeare's works, this artist gave the 
 world his rendering of The Tempest, Shake- 
 speare Nursed by Tragedy and Comedy, and 
 The Infant Shakespeare Attended by the 
 Passions. 
 
 The thought of Romney working to 
 interpret Shakespeare's plays strangely 
 fascinates the mind. We have elsewhere 
 drawn a parallel between the Elizabethan 
 dramatist and the Georgian artist. Each 
 came from a remote country district, each 
 wrestled, Jacob-like, with fortune, and 
 achieved fame ; each left wife and children 
 at the call of destiny. The parallel grows 
 more striking when Romney passed under 
 the compelling influence of Emma Hart, 
 afterwards Lady Hamilton. One thinks of 
 Mary Fitton and of the impenetrable 
 mystery of the sonnets. The Elizabethan 
 poet and the Georgian painter both felt the 
 incentive that so often stirs man to employ 
 his ripest powers of genius. In all proba- 
 bility W. E. Henley has come as near to the 
 true explanation of affairs as it is possible 
 for us to arrive when he says in his Century 
 of Artists, " The dominant note in Romney's
 
 58 Romney 
 
 life is one of sexual tragedy. The worship 
 in paint which he professes for Emma Lyon 
 is comparable of its kind and in its degree 
 with that which Dante practised for Beatrice 
 in poetry. That he was not materially her 
 lover is suggested by the fact that he never 
 tires of painting her. The triumphant male 
 does not commonly disperse his energies in 
 celebrating the peculiarities of his conquest. 
 There have been examples to the contrary, 
 of course ; but good taste, good feeling, the 
 instinct of sex, the necessities of art, are 
 generally on the other side, and for one such 
 outcry of full-fed satisfaction and delight as, 
 say, Rossetti's Nuptial Sleep (which may or 
 may not be genuine) there are a thousand such 
 voicings of mere desire, as, say, Adelaida and 
 Romney's Lady Hamilton passim." 
 
 It was in July of the year 1782, when 
 Romney was forty-eight years of age, that 
 the Honourable Charles Greville, the nephew 
 of Sir William Hamilton, brought his mistress 
 Emma Hart (ne'e Amy Lyon) to sit for the 
 artist. A new planet swam into his ken, 
 and for the future, as long as reason reigned 
 supreme, this woman (when they met, only 
 a girl of about nineteen) was Romney's
 
 Training and Association 59 
 
 " divine lady," and the very centre of his 
 inspiration. 
 
 If you get simple beauty, and nought else. 
 You get about the best thing God invents. 
 
 Artists, poets, musicians, people of rank and 
 fortune, men of influence, vied with one 
 another to celebrate her beauty.* Romney, 
 on his part, set aside orders and commissions 
 in order to study and express the charms 
 that his delicate and observing taste so 
 clearly discovered and idealized. All the 
 vulgar and unjust calumny of the world 
 that has been cast around this association 
 is aspersion utterly devoid of fact. Like 
 Shakespeare, like thousands of lesser men, 
 Romney, the artist, had found a grace that 
 opened before his eyes avenues along which 
 his genius could wander towards its paradise, 
 and he took the path with joy and ecstasy. 
 Not one of his pictures of this beauty affords 
 the slightest suggestion of indelicacy : and 
 how much less valuable would be Romney's 
 offering to his country without the pictures 
 of Emma Hart ? 
 
 In the ten years from 1775 to 1785, that 
 
 * Ward & Roberts' Romney : A Catalogue Raisonnt.
 
 60 Romney 
 
 is to say, in the years following his visit to 
 Italy, and especially the exercise upon him 
 of Correggio's influence, the brush of Romney 
 was employed upon the portraits of the most 
 famous people of England fair women, 
 statesmen, divines, men of eminence in their 
 professions. He was earning in a twelve- 
 month the sum of four thousand pounds, 
 but he was dissatisfied. It was at this very 
 period that he referred to " this cursed 
 portrait painting." Probably he felt that 
 the powers within him were circumscribed 
 by the limitation of portraiture, a mere 
 chronicle of the faces of men and women 
 around him. He carped at the very means 
 which achieved his fame and which have 
 brought down to our own day the memory 
 of his genius a genius whose true value is yet 
 to be estimated. For there are those who feel 
 that Romney's work has not as yet won the 
 full recognition of which it is worthy. 
 
 From the year 1782 onwards he felt the 
 comfort of the inspiration that flowed from 
 the grace and beauty of Emma Hart. 
 When he lost her temporarily in 1791 he 
 was exceedingly depressed. But the sun- 
 light returned. " Since she has resumed her
 
 Training and Association 61 
 
 former kindness, my health and spirits are 
 quite recovered." So much did his happi- 
 ness depend upon the exercise of his artistic 
 faculties. Cowper, in his Sonnet to Romney, 
 bears testimony to an important fact that 
 Romney does not merely represent a form 
 and semblance, but reveals personal 
 character in his portraits : 
 
 Not the form alone 
 
 And semblance, but, however faintly shown, 
 The mind's impression, too, on every face. 
 
 But not all his visits to Hayley's home at 
 Eartham, the society of eminent clients, 
 treasured friends, kindred spirits such as 
 Cowper, the promise of young and talented 
 life as in the case of Flaxman,* who took a 
 lodging in London " in the neighbourhood 
 of our dear Romney," neither success nor 
 failure could arrest the definite decline that 
 had clearly set in by these years ; though 
 there are instances of his work at this time 
 which show no decline, as, for example, his 
 Milton of 1792. 
 
 * Flaxman said, " I always remember Mr. 
 Romney's notice of my boyish years and productions 
 with gratitude ; his original and striking conversa- 
 tion, his masterly, grand, and feeling compositions 
 are continually before me. and I still feel the benefits 
 of his acquaintance and recommendation."
 
 62 Romney 
 
 The death of Reynolds in 1792, leaving 
 Romney as it did the foremost place among 
 contemporary British artists, stimulated him 
 to further effort. In the following year he 
 wrote to his brother to say that his health 
 was not constant, that his nerves gave way, 
 and that he had no time to go in quest of 
 pleasure to prevent decline of health. He 
 adds that his hands are full, and that " I shall 
 regret the necessity of forbearing to take new 
 faces. There is a delight in the novelty 
 greater than in the profit gained by sending 
 them home finished, but it must be done." 
 
 In the overleaping ambition of his later 
 years, vast schemes as impossible of realisa- 
 tion as the plan of Chaucer for the Canter- 
 bury Tales, or of Spenser for the Faerie 
 Queene, we see more than mere unconsidered 
 ambition. What is hinted at, in that 
 portrait of himself, of germs that might take 
 root and grow, was by this time becoming 
 manifest. It has been asserted that he was 
 reflected in the picture painted by Sir Martin 
 Archer Shee* as a " restless egotist con- 
 
 * There is a reproduction of this picture in 
 Putnam's Monthly and The Critic, vol. 2 for April- 
 Sept., 1907, p. 517-
 
 Training and Association 63 
 
 tinually hardened to the sufferings he did 
 not behold, selfish increasingly, and in- 
 creasingly desponding, passing now into an 
 old age not much to be respected his 
 sharpened features shaped into a scowl of 
 bitterness, certainly of complete disappoint- 
 ment." 
 
 This estimate of the last few frail years 
 may be just or unjust. We usually prefer 
 to judge the man or woman in maturity, and 
 not when the fruit has passed beyond that 
 stage. His later letters point to remaining 
 grace in his temperament, and the amiable 
 qualities which so endeared him to his 
 friends surely could not entirely disappear 
 " while yet the taper glowed." We need 
 not stop to consider the point, for with the 
 decline of his powers there naturally ceased 
 any permanent influence from without ; his 
 ideas conceived upon so vast" a scale were 
 just extravagant schemes impossible of 
 achievement and destined never to be 
 completed. 
 
 In Romney we see what Richard Cumber- 
 land described as " the master of his own 
 fortune," and, so far as we can judge from 
 this appreciation of Romney by his dis-
 
 64 Romney 
 
 criminating friend, in spite of the subsequent 
 neglect which befell Romney, there seems 
 to have been also a real understanding by 
 many people in his own lifetime of the artist's 
 greatness, although, curiously enough, as 
 we have said, the student finds even then 
 an unwillingness to make any definite 
 attempt to estimate the extent of that 
 greatness. " He was a man too great to be 
 consigned to oblivion ; but the task of doing 
 justice to his abilities is not a light one. . . . 
 It is not the annals of the man, but the 
 discussion of his art that constitutes the 
 difficulty ; the events of his life are soon 
 told ; but the emanation of his genius 
 should be traced with precision, and that 
 demands both knowledge of his work and 
 acquaintance with his art."* 
 
 * Memoirs of Mr. George Romney, by Richard 
 Cumberland, in The European Magazine, vol. 43. 
 (June, 1803).
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 STYLE, DEVELOPMENT, CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 THE student of Romney finds a decided 
 interest in examining the opinions of writers 
 upon this great artist. Probably in no other 
 instance is there more diffidence in the 
 expression of opinion. Even the most 
 enthusiastic of his supporters introduce 
 saving clauses, which, in the event of a 
 change of public opinion, shall excuse the 
 writer from having unreservedly lavished 
 praise upon the subject of his pen. 
 
 We have mentioned elsewhere the warm 
 praise conferred upon Romney by one or two 
 of his contemporaries ; the reader is aware 
 of the indifference with which his work was 
 regarded earlier in the igth century ; and 
 most of us have an idea of the large prices 
 fetched in modern days by those same 
 pictures. In 1805, Long, " the artistic 
 surgeon," purchased the picture of Lady 
 F 65
 
 66 Romney 
 
 Hamilton as Circe for a trifle ovei 15. He 
 " improved " the work by painting into the 
 background two wolves and a panther ; yet, 
 in 1888, this " improved " work of art sold 
 for over four thousand pounds a larger 
 sum than the artist, quick though he was 
 with his brush, earned at his best period in a 
 whole year. It is quite easy to calculate 
 Romney's fame in money terms. In 1807 
 his portrait of Mr. John Lowther sold for 
 5s. ; in 1913 Anne, Lady de la Pole fetched 
 the sum of 20,370. In the Hamilton 
 Palace Sale of 1919 a Romney portrait of 
 The Misses Beckford realised the astounding 
 sum of 52,000 guineas. 
 
 If we apply this test of sales we find a 
 steady rise in his prices from the 'fifties of 
 last century onward to our own day. The 
 Daily Telegraph of 4th February, 1922, tells 
 how a man at a sale in Whitehaven bought 
 three portraits for less than a sovereign. 
 Two were by Tilly Kettle, " an inoffensive 
 eighteenth-century portrait painter," the 
 third, unframed, was of a boy and girl, and 
 bore no artist's name. Forty years later a 
 local artist persuaded the owner to send this 
 unframed canvas to Christie's. It was
 
 National GMery 
 
 George Romney
 
 Style and Development 67 
 
 acclaimed as a Romney and fetched the 
 price of 6,500 guineas. Even the Kettle 
 sold for 205 guineas, and thus " Romney 's 
 fame wreathed itself enhancingly around the 
 shade of his contemporary." 
 
 The attitude of the critics has been 
 constant in its divided nature. During 
 Romney's life John Flaxman, R.A., and 
 Thomas Phillips, R.A., were both eulogistic, 
 the former warmly so, the latter more 
 impartially and perhaps with sounder judg- 
 ment. Richard Cumberland was clearly 
 aware of his friend's greatness, but was quite 
 at a loss to express fully his reasons for his 
 opinions. However, his estimate of Romney, 
 although the shortest of the three biographies 
 that appeared soon after the artist's death, 
 is by far the most reliable and most free 
 from prejudice. Horace Walpole, who 
 cherished no especial love for Reynolds, and 
 might presumably have leaned towards 
 Romney, only refers to him once or twice in 
 his wonderful letters, and evidently did not 
 hold him in high esteem. Passing over the 
 long period of neglect which, although it 
 speaks for itself, is partly explained in the 
 next chapter of this book, we arrive at the
 
 68 Romney 
 
 nineteenth century, only to find a similar 
 disparity in the estimates of modern critics 
 upon the man's works. There is the same 
 unwillingness to blame thoroughly, or praise 
 outright, the same inclination to safeguard 
 against the possibility of a future revulsion 
 of feeling. Either we have not yet arrived 
 at a true estimate of George Romney 's work 
 (which indeed seems to be the more likely 
 state of affairs) or else the sum total of hi? 
 virtues is to be culled from the criticism 
 that blows so hot and so cold around his 
 reputation. 
 
 Still, it would appear that the ordinary 
 individual, free from prejudice and simply 
 aware that a picture pleases or displeases, 
 and unaware, perhaps, of preconceived 
 notions derived from former schools of 
 thought and judgment, has consistently 
 taken Romney into favour, In the artist's 
 lifetime this class was formed by the sitters, 
 and their friends and acquaintances who 
 saw the portraits ; in our days it is com- 
 posed of the larger class of that public 
 which, in recent years, owing to the institu- 
 tion and development of art galleries and 
 collections, is slowly but surely forming its
 
 Style and Development 69 
 
 own judgment, irrespective, to a very large 
 degree, of the opinion of the critic, or of 
 those little circles of cunning art dealers, 
 who, for the sake of enhancing sale values, 
 employ those skilled in the task to write up 
 the work of certain men with a view to 
 profit. One of Romney's sitters said : " I 
 fancy I called up my good looks to-day : 
 where they came from I don't know, but 
 my picture is certainly much improved. All 
 seem satisfied with it. I have reason to be, 
 for it is handsomer than ever I was in my 
 life." The artist, with delicate subtlety, 
 had clothed his sitter with a " beauty " 
 which won her good opinion, and also that 
 of her friends. The writer, looking at one of 
 Romney's pictures in the Tate Gallery, 
 overheard a bystander remark that, in his 
 opinion, the comparison between Romney 
 and Reynolds, with regard to the two 
 pictures concerned, was in every respect in 
 favour of Romney, in form, expression, 
 colour effect, and the laying on of the 
 pigments. Where, at present, is any critic 
 who would be so bold as to advance such a 
 claim in the world of art ? 
 
 In what essentials does this popularity of
 
 70 Romney 
 
 Romney consist, and what is it about his 
 style, development, and characteristics that 
 has achieved a success which one of the 
 greatest writers upon Romney declares has 
 given him not only a hold upon our own 
 generation, but one which will continue as 
 long as our art endures ? These are no 
 easy questions to answer. In reality they 
 were the unexpressed questions that lay in 
 Richard Cumberland's mind when he wrote 
 from his heart the contributions which he 
 felt were demanded by the death of his 
 friend. 
 
 We may safely assume that Romney's 
 development underwent a rapid growth 
 during his visit to Italy. We have tried to 
 show how serious were the limitations of his 
 art up to that point, when, by his own 
 industry, he was enabled to indulge himself 
 in the satisfaction of that deep craving of 
 his soul to see the masters of art at first- 
 hand. If we consider his age at the time of 
 his visit, it would, at first sight, appear a 
 tremendous omission to ignore all that he 
 had painted previously ; but while we need 
 not ignore, nor in the least neglect such work, 
 yet so lamentably had his genius suffered for
 
 Style and Development 71 
 
 want of training and culture that it is only 
 fair to Romney himself to judge him mainly 
 by the work that left his hands after the 
 expansion of his views of art due to his 
 journey to Italy. His previous attempts 
 had been the outcome of pure genius ; his 
 subsequent works show that same primordial 
 genius restrained and enhanced by the 
 accepted canons of art. Thomas Phillips, 
 in the old days, and Mr. Roberts, in recent 
 times, both refer to the excellence of the 
 work done by Romney in the ten years 
 after his sojourn in Italy. " The purity and 
 perfection of ancient sculpture appear to 
 have made the deepest impression upon his 
 mind ; and he afterwards assiduously 
 cherished the taste he then imbibed. . . . 
 Hence grandeur and simplicity became the 
 principal objects of his ambition ; he 
 perceived these qualities distinctly, and 
 employed them judiciously, even whilst 
 imitating nature in his most usual occupation 
 portrait painting."* 
 
 From the outset Romney had worked 
 directly from nature, with the small excep- 
 
 * Thomas Phillips, in A. B. Chamberlain's George 
 p. 374.
 
 72 Romney 
 
 tion of his attempts at copying from old 
 masters, which we have noted elsewhere. 
 The purple distances of the splendid land- 
 scape that lay about him in his infancy and 
 youth, the ever-changing surface of the 
 lakes, the pageant of the wide sky, in short, 
 all the charms of nature in her most splendid 
 moods, wrought their effect into his soul. 
 Again, throughout his life, he painted direct 
 from the human form, and his pictures are 
 the representation of an artist whose 
 inspiration worked unchecked and un- 
 restrained up to the time of his visit to 
 Italy. The change that is noticeable after 
 that period of close and intensive study is all 
 in the direction of a more studied grace, and 
 beauty, and feeling for colour. His ten- 
 dency to rebel against the convention of 
 dress and fashion is more displayed in the 
 drapery of his female figures.* In the 
 letters written as he went out to Italy he 
 commented somewhat curiously upon what 
 he describes as the degeneracy of French 
 taste and the failure of the contemporary 
 
 * See, however, Essays on Art by John Hoppner, 
 R.A., who states that Romney's draperies are more 
 suitable for sculpture than painted portraits.
 
 Style and Development 73 
 
 French School to absorb the best from the 
 Italian masters. He was welcomed in 
 France by Joseph Vernet, who took him to 
 the Louvre ; but the remark referred to 
 shows that Romney knew but little of the 
 development of French art in the earlier 
 part of his own century, of the work 
 of Bonchardin and Pigalle in sculpture, 
 of Gabriel in architecture, of the work of 
 the Sevres factory, of Boucher and the 
 Gobelins, of Greuze, of Nattier. He pre- 
 ferred Le Sueur to Watteau.* In Italy he 
 studied for long periods the work of Vandyck, 
 Paul Veronese, Correggio ; he wrote from 
 Bologna on the work of Caracci ; at Venice 
 he came under the sway of Titian ; again at 
 Parma he renewed his deep interest in 
 Correggio. But there is no doubt that he 
 also looked at art from the point of view of 
 the sculptor. Accordingly his later pictures 
 do not simply speak of a deeper knowledge 
 of colour and colour effects ; they tell as 
 plainly of changed methods of production; 
 they announce Romney 's taste in his 
 selection of those adornments which, from 
 
 * Ward and Roberts : Romney : A Catalogue 
 Raisonnt.
 
 74 Romney 
 
 his point of view, shall most strikingly reveal 
 and illustrate the charm of his subject. It 
 has been pointed out that, apart from 
 portrait painting, his compositions exemplify 
 his endeavour to attain simplicity, expressed 
 in dignified and beautiful character, while, 
 at the same time, nature shall stand forth 
 in lively guise. His study of Grecian 
 sculpture is blended, therefore, with art, and 
 thus his tendency to devote his spare time 
 to the other arts cognate with painting told 
 constantly upon his production. 
 
 The public, in viewing one of Romney's 
 pictures, is not concerned so much with 
 standards of art, and cares but little for the 
 terms of the critic. To the ordinary person 
 Romney appeals, and, it would appear, will 
 continue to appeal, because his emotion is 
 manifested through the grace of his art. 
 Romney, like Laurence Sterne and Fanny 
 Burney, lived in the age of sentiment : and 
 precisely as that age with all its inclination 
 is revealed through certain forms of litera- 
 ture, so in this great artist the sway of senti- 
 ment is shown in feature as well as in form. 
 Hayley tells how Romney's lips quivered 
 with emotions of pity at the sight of distress,
 
 Style and Development 75 
 
 or at the relation of a pathetic story. 
 Cumberland narrates that Romney was 
 prone to tears. Elsewhere we learn how 
 this silent, retiring man would, at times, 
 when deeply stirred by some remark in the 
 conversation of his friends, depart from his 
 usual habit of silence, and, like Charles Lamb 
 on certain marked occasions, pour forth in 
 his own striking and natural phraseology an 
 eloquence and knowledge which not only 
 surprised and astonished his hearers, but 
 held them spellbound at this manifestation 
 of a power which generally lay concealed. 
 Sentiment was the talisman that unlocked 
 the stores of wealth within Romney 's heart 
 and soul. D. S. MacColl has said that " a 
 new face set Romney no new problem."* 
 By this he probably means that as a rule 
 Romney was not concerned to read the 
 revelation of character in the lineaments of 
 the pictures his sitters brought to him. He 
 was simply concerned with his feminine 
 sitters in capturing what the face might offer 
 of beau ty and grace. It has been charmingly 
 suggested that the reason for this was that 
 
 * Saturday Review, June 9th, 1900.
 
 76 Romney 
 
 he was in love with loveliness, and that he 
 found his inspiration in 
 
 The witchery of eyes, the grace that tips 
 The inexpressible douceur of the lips. 
 
 This witchery and this grace he found in 
 women and children ; he gave it. to the 
 world in such pictures as that of Lady Sligo, 
 Lady Bell Hamilton, and, perhaps, especially 
 in the delicate and joyous innocency that 
 almost is felt breathing from the portrait of 
 The Gower Children. 
 
 Was it something more than mere accident 
 that brought into Romney's life, at a time 
 when his conceptions of beauty had under- 
 gone such transformation, the charm and 
 fascination of Emma Hart ? There is no 
 doubt that Romney was one of those silent 
 men who can better express by action than 
 by word the working of the heart and brain ; 
 but like such men he probably felt more 
 deeply because of the want of adequate and 
 appropriate language to relieve the sway of 
 inward passion and storm. He had missed 
 early culture and education. His letters tell 
 very plainly what had been his deprivation 
 in this respect. Yet, although language was 
 mute, feeling was dominant. Once, at least,
 
 Slyle and Development 77 
 
 he speaks in tones that unmistakably 
 translate the mood within. As he was about 
 to leave Rome he visited Mount Viterbo to 
 catch the glory of the city of the Seven Hills, 
 and his words reveal clearly the depths 
 within : " My affections began to revive, 
 and something hung about my heart that 
 felt like sorrow which continued to increase 
 till I reached the summit of Mount Viterbo. 
 I arrived there about half an hour before 
 the Vetturino ; indeed, I had hastened to do 
 so, as well knowing it would be the last time 
 I should see Rome. I looked with an eager 
 eye to discover that divine place. It was 
 enveloped in a light vapour, as if the rays of 
 Apollo shone with greater lustre there than 
 at any other spot on this terrestrial globe. 
 My mind visited every place, and thought of 
 everything that had given me pleasure, 
 and I continued some time in that state 
 with a thousand tender sensations play- 
 ing around my heart, till I was almost 
 lost in sorrow think, O think, my 
 dear Carter, where you are, and do not 
 let the sweets of that divine place escape 
 from you ; do not leave a stone unturned 
 that is classical, do not leave a form
 
 78 Romney 
 
 unsought that is beautiful, nor even a 
 line of the great Michael Angelo." 
 
 With such an insight into this man's heart 
 of hearts, one cannot wonder that the critic 
 finds that Romney was sensitive to a greater 
 degree than Reynolds and Gainsborough to 
 the pure grace of line, but was more fre- 
 quently preoccupied with a refined conscious- 
 ness of womanly beauty, only a little less 
 meretricious than the beauty sought after by 
 Greuze. " Lacking as he did the consum- 
 mate technical skill of these two great masters 
 (i.e., Reynolds and Gainsborough), he yet 
 had the gift of seizing and fixing on his 
 canvas that strange evanescent spirit of 
 female beauty, that Fata Morgana of 
 painting, which greater artists than Romney 
 have seen, but failed to secure."* " His 
 draperies are noticeable for exceeding 
 beauty, but it is the beauty of sweet sim- 
 plicity, and of a simplicity not painfully 
 sought for, but quickly found. There is 
 admirable grace in the easy concord of 
 those large folds. It had not been the aim 
 of Gainsborough ; it was beyond Reynolds ; 
 
 * Lionel Cust in The Magazine of Art.
 
 Style ami Development 79 
 
 its inspiration was more from Greece than 
 from Rome. The drapery was not gorgeous, 
 but slender and severe, even in all the 
 exquisiteness of its flow ; its folds scanty 
 rather than voluminous ; it answered so to 
 Flaxman's ideal, and his ideal was the 
 highest. His art deals neither with the 
 subtleties of intellectual character, nor with 
 the tasks of minutely imitative painting, 
 and in characterizing it the first word to be 
 used is grace, and almost the last is grace."* 
 Upon this sensitive spirit, this being, able 
 to quiver with emotion, and before these 
 discerning eyes, there came the form of a 
 woman whose beauty of face and lines of 
 form appealed to every artist and poet who 
 beheld her. To Romney's sentimental 
 nature there appeared at this juncture the 
 very embodiment of this sentiment. To 
 this man who was in love with loveliness, 
 was revealed, in the flesh, perfection of 
 feminine form and beaut}'. If his ordinary 
 woman-sitter found her beauty strangely 
 and subtly enhanced and refined, as his 
 brush portrayed her charms upon his canvas, 
 
 * Frederick Wedmore, quoted by A. B. Chamberlain 
 
 in George Romney.
 
 8o Romney 
 
 what would this " divine lad}' " find in his 
 representations of her contour, carriage, and 
 gesture ? It matters not, indeed, what she 
 found : it is rather what her admirer and 
 worshipper discovered and portrayed. 
 Romney may have lacked concentration ; 
 he may have frittered away his genius upon 
 a host of ill-conceived projects ; he may 
 have cried out upon " this cursed portrait 
 painting." In all probability, through the 
 utter deficiency of his early training, the 
 world has lost some of its greatest pictures ; 
 but the Sublime and the Beautiful of a 
 sentimental age have been caught and 
 handed down to us by this artist of sentiment. 
 We may never see these pictures of Emma 
 Hart collected and grouped together in one 
 place ; the world has apparently lost that 
 opportunity ; but, if it were possible to do 
 so, one would then see the culmination of 
 this great painter's work along the lines on 
 which it was destined to reach its highest 
 form. 
 
 It is interesting enough at this point to 
 seek for confirmation of Romney's view with 
 regard to Emma Hart's beauty and grace. 
 We are told that she proved to be a moving
 
 Style and Development 81 
 
 spirit with contemporary artists and poets ; 
 but anyone who wishes may read more 
 definitely the effect she produced upon 
 certain powerful minds and intellects at the 
 close of the eighteenth century.* Other 
 artists than Romney painted her portrait, 
 although Lord R. Gower estimates that 
 George Romney painted her a hundred 
 times. Goethe, passing from Rome to Sicily, 
 says that Tischbein, the German artist, is 
 at work upon her portrait, and then, with 
 manifest delight the poet describes her 
 qualities and the joy he has in her presence. 
 " She exhibits every possible variety of 
 posture, expression, and love, so that at last 
 the spectator almost fancies it a dream." 
 ..." One beholds her in perfection, in 
 movements, in ravishing variety, all that 
 the greatest of artists have rejoiced to be 
 able to produce." Later on Goethe calls 
 her a most beautiful wife, " a masterpiece of 
 the great artist nature." Other writers bear 
 similar testimony. Lord R. Gower gives 
 repioductions of two representations of her 
 one by the famous Italian Rega ; the 
 
 * Article in The Anglo-Saxon Review, Vol. VI. (by 
 
 Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower). 
 G
 
 82 Romney 
 
 other (found by Lord R. Gowcr in Rome) 
 by an unknown artist. Gower adds : "Of 
 all the women who may be termed historical 
 beauties Emma Hart was the most beautiful. 
 Emma has the admiration of Romney, the 
 great Sir Joshua, Thomas Lawrence, and 
 Goethe. 
 
 Without any intention of depart.mentalis- 
 ing Romney 's work, it is possible for us to 
 divide the time of his artistic output into 
 three main periods, with a fourth during 
 which his genius struggled even more 
 ineffectively to free itself from the gathering 
 clouds of his malady. Throughout these 
 periods his talent flowed persistently, but 
 while the earlier years, up to the visit to 
 Rome, reveal his native genius, yet, during 
 that visit, and for about ten years afterwards, 
 his work was clearly improved and broadened 
 by the impressions he received from Italian 
 sources, while in the third period the beauty 
 of Emma held him in thraldom a thraldom 
 which resulted in those wonderful portraits 
 which reveal his divine subject in so many 
 entrancing aspects. " She could be arch, 
 innocent, seductive, and simple ; a child, 
 and a coquette, angel, and wanton." What
 
 Style and Development 83 
 
 ever title he gave to the picture, Lady 
 Hamilton as a Bacchante, Lady Hamilton as 
 Nature, whether she figures as Mirth, as 
 Ariadne, as St. Cecilia, or a sempstress, out 
 of the portrait steals the inspiration that 
 caught his genius and translated it into these 
 superb creations. For Romney, at least, 
 feminine beauty became personified, and 
 passed from being a mere haunting, baffling, 
 impossible dream, a dazzling will-o'-the-wisp, 
 into the face and form of a real and living 
 woman Galatea, as it were, stepped from 
 the realm of the imagination. He had 
 painted, and was to paint, the portraits of 
 the great and noble. He was never so en- 
 grossed as when he was employed in figuring 
 the grace and beauty of high-born and 
 delicate women ; but now, like the prophet's 
 rod, the super-charm of this ideal sitter 
 swallowed all his other admirations, for grace 
 was added to grace, and beauty to beauty. 
 There can be no doubt whatever that in the 
 portrait of Emma, Lady Hamilton, we have 
 the consummation of Romney 's art. That 
 there are outstanding exceptions nobody 
 would care to deny. Among his earlier 
 work we may single out, for example, The
 
 84 Romney 
 
 Parson's Daughter ; from his later achieve- 
 ments The Margravine of Anspach ; but the 
 very soul of his power is depicted in the 
 " refined lusciousness " of his goddess in art. 
 Pictures appeal in various ways : it is 
 often a matter of individual choice which is 
 to be selected as the " best " of a man's 
 work, but possibly few of Romney 's 
 pictures would appeal more than his Nun.* 
 Kneeling before the figure of a saint, just 
 where the light falls strongly on her upturned 
 face, with her hands lying crossed across her 
 breast, the Nun lifts pleading eyes towards 
 Heaven. Over her loosened hair flows a 
 veil that offers a contrast with those dark 
 locks, and in its delicacy almost merges with 
 the purity of the light and the whiteness of 
 the bosom. Although it is suggested, the 
 full beauty of the contour of the lower limbs 
 is partly lost in the folds of the dark gown. 
 But for two reasons the picture seems 
 remarkable ; firstly, in that it offers more 
 especially an exquisite rendering of the 
 perfect beauty of that oval face with all its 
 latent womanliness, and, secondly, for the 
 
 * Messrs. Ward and Roberts say that the Nun does 
 not represent Emma Hart.
 
 Style and Development 85 
 
 flood of light which falls not only on the face 
 and breast of the suppliant, but also upon 
 the delicate sculpture, and sweet petals of 
 flowers in the vases on the ledge, and 
 partly, also, on a basket of roses on the floor. 
 One thinks of a later picture, Ecce Ancilla 
 Domini, and sees in this eighteenth-century 
 masterpiece a figure of a very human woman, 
 passionately real, but spiritually transcen- 
 dent in her perfect pose amid that pure 
 white glow of ecstatic radiance. We find 
 the same representation of an oval face in 
 other pictures, notably in that which shows 
 Lady Hamilton sitting with her hands 
 lightly finger-tipped together on her knees, 
 dressed in a simple, light dress with a full 
 ample skirt, and wearing a Pamela hat tilted 
 negligently upon unbound hair which flows 
 gracefully over her shoulders. But in this 
 very different study one misses the wonder 
 of the lustrous eyes ; for in the picture of 
 Emma the face is bent downwards as though 
 the sitter were lost in tender reflection, and 
 the fringed lids hide those twin worlds of 
 tender mystery. 
 
 It ma)' be that some day the world will 
 receive, as a compensation for its inability
 
 86 Romney 
 
 to visit Romney's superb productions 
 grouped together in one place, a series of 
 good reproductions of the third and most 
 splendid phase of his power ; for a careful 
 study of these pictures would enable the 
 student more definitely to understand and 
 reverence this master's complex gifts. In 
 pose and expression, in robe and drapery, 
 in the arrangement of lock and tress, whether 
 lying loose or rippling beneath hat or veil, 
 in the display of the attractions of face and 
 figure, mouth demure or roguish in its 
 witchery, showing the white teeth between 
 the parted lips, in dimple of cheek or arm, 
 we have nothing in our masters which 
 approaches these sympathetic interpreta- 
 tions of what Romney saw in his " divine 
 lady." It is all so delicate, so winsome, so 
 sweetly pure, and yet so truthfully human, 
 that the student of these pictures is brought 
 close, very close, into communion with the 
 artist and his subject, and seems to have 
 known them both personally, to have heard 
 them discuss the details which were to 
 produce these glories of our art, to have 
 cherished an affection for them as though 
 their lives were bound up with our own. So
 
 Style and Development 87 
 
 attractive is the theme that in a short work 
 like this the danger lies in its receiving too 
 much notice ; yet, from one point of view, 
 these pictures do, indeed, stand out as special 
 representatives of Romney's work. Part of 
 his genius at least lies in this discrimination 
 and capture of the beauty of Emma Hart. 
 As a portrait painter Romney stands or 
 falls. We can judge him completely only 
 from that one pronounced feature of his 
 work. It is, of course, impossible to trace 
 out thoroughly in any short volume the full 
 extent and development of such work of his 
 as we possess, from the early, small full- 
 length portrait of Jacob Morland, which may 
 be cited as a type of his work prior to his 
 coming to London, and, indeed, the first 
 portrait he ever painted, to the head of 
 William Gay, painted in 1796, which won 
 " at its first sight " the heart of William 
 Covvper, while the artist himself said " that 
 he had never examined any manly features 
 which he would sooner choose for a model, 
 if he had occasion to represent the com- 
 passionate benignity of our Saviour." The 
 reader may be referred to the second book 
 in Appendix II, of this volume (Romney: A
 
 88 
 
 Critical Essay, by Messrs. Ward & Roberts) 
 for an idea of the scope of the material that 
 offers itself for study and comment. But, 
 in tracing the course of Romney's activities 
 as an artist, it is equally impossible to 
 neglect certain other features of his work 
 which bring themselves to the notice of the 
 student, while, in another section (Part IV.), 
 it will be desirable to refer to the remarkable 
 charm of his brushwork, which wins the 
 admiration of the beholder. 
 
 The backgrounds of Romney's pictures, if 
 fully dealt with, would afford much material 
 for discussion and conjecture. In his 
 portrait of Lord Thurlow one sees a group of 
 trees in rich foliage, while, through the 
 trunks, lies a glimpse of water, and, rising 
 above the topmost branches, the twin spires 
 of a church. Mrs. Maxwell, in a long, loose, 
 white robe, gathered by a sash round the 
 waist, stands leaning her left arm lightly 
 upon a stone pillar. Behind her are the 
 trunks of birch trees, and, in the background, 
 lies a glade leading to the verdure of a hill- 
 slope. In Jacob Morland's picture we see 
 an open landscape beyond the figure ; there 
 is a ragged rock against which a dog stands,
 
 National Gallery 
 
 / 
 
 (i 
 
 George Romney
 
 Style and Development 89 
 
 beautifully outlined, while the mountains of 
 the Lake District die away in the distance. 
 The portrait of the dog in this picture has 
 been justly praised for its representation of 
 characteristic sagacity and its appearance 
 of reality. A lovely landscape is more than 
 hinted at in the portrait of Mrs. Nathaniel 
 Lee Acton. We have referred to the sculp- 
 tured niche and the vases of flowers in the 
 picture of The Nun. In his portrait of 
 Master Pelham there occurs an example of 
 Romney's rapid painting which also illus- 
 trates his power to depict natural objects. 
 A brace of partridges was painted in about 
 half an hour. At first sight these seem a 
 piece of slovenly slap-dash work, " but when 
 seen at a proper distance deception becomes 
 so perfect that one might go and try to pick 
 them up." Again and again Romney's 
 pictures seem to cry almost pathetically, 
 ' Even if this wonderful portrait were 
 removed, with all its charm of feature and 
 splendid reproduction of dress, of robe or 
 suit or uniform, the craft of the painter 
 would hold you with a power which he feels 
 he possesses, but is not at liberty fully to 
 reveal.' So much is displayed that the
 
 go Romney 
 
 thought arises that, if Romney had Lved in 
 an age of landscape painters, he might have 
 found a greater fame than that he has won 
 as a portrait painter. There seems no doubt 
 of the knowledge of his power. Probably 
 the strength of his appeal comes out more 
 than elsewhere in the background of the 
 portrait of Mrs. Mingay. 
 
 But his outcry against " this cursed 
 portrait painting " gathers pathos in the 
 reflection that Romney undoubtedly 
 possessed other powers as an artist, and did, 
 indeed, struggle at times to express the 
 inspiration within him. The Life by Hayley, 
 or by his son, discloses the fact that the 
 artist's mind was full of conception. To 
 what extent he drew from his own reading 
 or upon the suggestions of friends for ideas, 
 the student must decide for himself. One 
 recalls Lord Chancellor Thurlow's cry, who 
 is reported to have said : " Romney, before 
 you paint Shakespeare, do for God's sake 
 read him ! " 
 
 There is no room to exemplify fully this 
 statement, but we may refer to one or two 
 facts. In 1770 Romney sent two pictures to 
 the Incorporated Society of Artists to illns-
 
 Style and Development 91 
 
 trate Mirth and Melancholy* the themes of 
 Milton's L' Allegro and // Penseroso. John 
 Romney says : " These pictures had great 
 merit." Later in life he is unable to accept 
 an invitation to visit Hayley at Eastbourne, 
 because " I am now set in for study. I have 
 made a large composition for Milton, and I 
 wish to keep my mind fixed to that work as 
 much as possible." His generous work in 
 connection with Boydell's scheme for a 
 " Shakespeare Gallery " illustrates his strong 
 leaning to the call of the genius of the great 
 dramatist. John Romney declared that the 
 idea of the scheme originated from his father. 
 The Infant Shakespeare Nursed by Tragedy 
 and Comedy ; The Infant Shakespeare 
 Attended by Nature and the Passions, might 
 easily have been suggested by the reading of 
 Thomas Gray's ode, The Progress of Poesy. f 
 
 * Dorothy Bland (or Jordan), the most beautiful 
 actress of the day, sat for Mirth. 
 
 t the dauntless child 
 
 Stretch'd forth his little arms, and smil'd. 
 
 " This pencil take " (she said), " whose colours clear 
 
 Richly paint the vernal years : 
 
 Thine, too, these golden keys, immortal Boy ! 
 
 This can unlock the gates of Joy, 
 
 Of horror that, and thrilling fears, 
 
 Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears."
 
 92 Romney 
 
 The rendering of Hayley's son Tom 
 as Robin Goodfellow is as clearly 
 produced by the music of A Midsummer 
 Night's Dream, Towards the end of his 
 career, when obsession seemed to sweep 
 giant projects like vast clouds across his 
 intellect, he writes to Hayley as follows : 
 " I had formed a plan of painting the Seven 
 Ages, and also the Visions of Adam with the 
 Angel, to bring in the Flood, and the 
 opening of the Ark, which would make six 
 large pictures (but this is a profound secret). 
 Indeed, to tell you the truth, I have made 
 designs for all the pictures, and very grand 
 subjects they are. I beg no human creature 
 may have a hint of it. My plan was, if I 
 should live and retain my senses and sight, 
 to paint six other subjects for Milton : three 
 where Satan is his hero, and three of Adam 
 and Eve. Perhaps six of each. I have ideas 
 of them all, and I may say sketches ; but 
 alas ! I cannot begin anything for one year 
 or two, and if my name was mentioned I 
 should hear nothing but abuse, and that I 
 cannot bear. This has always been my 
 enem}'. My nerves are too weak for 
 supporting anything in public." Among
 
 Style and Development 93 
 
 other pieces of his work Romney attempted 
 some illustrations of Percy's Reliques. 
 
 There is no necessity to draw attention 
 to the merits or demerits of such work of 
 the artist. Suffice it to say that throughout 
 his life he was possessed of pregnant ideas, 
 and throughout his life claims upon him 
 made it obligatory that he should earn 
 money by his art. Added to these facts is 
 one other of deep significance, that he lacked, 
 clearly lacked, the knowledge and training 
 which should have been his in the early 
 decades of his life. And this is the fact 
 that critics, with a lack of sympathy, have 
 occasionally passed over with cruel silence. 
 Had it not been for these hard limitations 
 Romney might have left a different record. 
 There is that in his work a delicacy, a hint 
 at beauty, an imagination of a sublime 
 order which leaves the mind charged with 
 the thought that here was an artist who could 
 have interpreted great themes, and put to 
 canvas delicate and masterly representations 
 01 some of the absorbing topics of our 
 literature, not to speak of facts in the realm 
 of History. 
 
 It is a hard fate that a painter or a poet
 
 94 Romney 
 
 is obliged to live in a state of warfare and 
 jostling. One recalls Hayley's story of the 
 fortunate circumstance of Romney's boy- 
 hood. Fortunate or not, it was the deciding 
 factor that separated him from the world of 
 dream and wonder, and plunged him irre- 
 vocably into the brilliant society which he 
 persistently depicted. In London his sitters 
 asked, " Have you ever been in France, 
 Mr. Romney ? " or " Have you ever studied 
 in Rome ? " And his very art in portrait 
 painting made it essential that he should 
 pursue his craft in order to develop his 
 resources, so that he might answer such 
 questions in the affirmative. Thus we see 
 this giant caught in the toils, constantly 
 struggling to break loose, but only gaining 
 his liberty when his divine strength was 
 exhausted, and the silver cord was well-nigh 
 snapped. In a sense, scarcely any other 
 life of an artist can offer such a tragedy, at 
 once so poignant, so continued, and so 
 suggestive of national loss. 
 
 One striking feature of Romney's life 
 deserves close consideration. That is his 
 fatal tendency to begin and then to leave 
 uncompleted, pictures prompted by his
 
 Style and Development 95 
 
 conception. Many an hour of the very 
 prime of his life was spent by Romney, who 
 worked indefatigably even by candle-light 
 at inceptive works which, for one reason 
 or another, were tossed aside. For instance, 
 in his Tragedy and Comedy Nursing Shakes- 
 peare, The Infant Shakespeare Attended by 
 the Passions, and The Alope, his model had 
 been the child of a soldier in the Guards. 
 The child died while these pictures were 
 being produced ; accordingly the pictures 
 remained unfinished. For a similar reason 
 the Group of Children in a Boat drifted out 
 to Sea was abandoned. The errand boy who 
 served for his model in the Shepherd Boy 
 Asleep Watched by his Dog at the Approach 
 of a Thunderstorm was dismissed for ill- 
 behaviour, and the picture was never com- 
 pleted. The Girl Mourning over her Fawn 
 just Killed by Lightning was thrown aside, 
 although near completion, because the 
 artist had no fawn from which to paint. 
 Similarly, the absence of a goat in The 
 Milk-pail overturned by a She-Goat anxious 
 to approach its Kid which a Milking-Girl is 
 Fondling was sufficient to account for the 
 unfinished piece. " I could enumerate many
 
 96 Romney 
 
 other unfinished fancy pieces," says his son, 
 " in all stages of progress, which, from diveis 
 impeding causes, were suffered to accumulate 
 in every corner of the house : no picture was 
 set aside from any difficulty in the art itself. 
 I could also mention several causes which 
 contributed to produce the vast heap of 
 unfinished portraits that obstructed the 
 progress to his gallery. The chief were the 
 poverty or meanness of the parties to whom 
 the pictures belonged. I have known ladies' 
 portraits, amounting in value to a thousand 
 guineas, remain unfinished for many months 
 for want of a model with fine hands and 
 arms. ... It was no uncommon circum- 
 stance, too, that, a chere amie having been 
 brought to sit for her portrait, both she and 
 the picture were deserted before the latter 
 was finished." 
 
 With regard to one portrait, at least, delay 
 fortunately was crowned by completion. 
 Lady Newdigate came to London in the 
 summer of 1790. Romney desired that she 
 should dress in white " sattin " with a long 
 train to the dress. She wrote to her 
 husband, " It is ye oddest thing I ever knew, 
 but I dare not disobey him as you are not
 
 97 
 
 here to support me." After two years this 
 life-size full-length was still unfinished ; but 
 eventually the artist gave the world the 
 picture which was so much admired by 
 George Eliot and which is described by her 
 in Mr. Gilfil's Love Story. " The elder lady 
 is tall and looks taller because of her 
 powdered hair, which is turned back over a 
 toupee and surmounted by lace nbbons. 
 She is nearly 50, but her complexion is still 
 fresh and beautiful with the beauty of an 
 auburn blonde ; her proud pouting lips, and 
 her head thrown backward give an im- 
 pression of hauteur which is not contradicted 
 by her grey eyes." It was Lady Newdigate 
 who fancied she called up her good looks 
 one day for Romney, although where they 
 came from she could not say, but her 
 picture was certainly improved. 
 
 Again and again in his life we read of 
 pictures being started and then neglected. 
 The haunting demon of nervous dejection, 
 the fears that ever dogged his path, the 
 cruel goads that drove him along the road 
 he knew he must tread but hated treading, 
 the very loftiness of his conceptions, all 
 these made war upon him. It has been
 
 98 Romney 
 
 suggested that we have so few of his pictures 
 which reflect, by reason of composition, the 
 manners and customs of society, simply 
 because Garrick, in 1768, was taken by 
 Cumberland to see Romney, and had his 
 attention caught by a large family piece. 
 A gentleman in a close buckled bob wig and 
 a scarlet waistcoat laced with gold, with his 
 wife and children (some sitting, some 
 standing) had taken possession of some yards 
 of canvas, very much, a^ it appeared, to their 
 own satisfaction, for they were perfectly 
 amused in a contented abstention from all 
 thought or action. Said Garrick : " Upon 
 my word, sir, this is a very regular, well- 
 ordered family, and that is a very bright 
 mahogany table at which that motherly 
 good lady is sitting ; and this worthy 
 gentleman in the scarlet waistcoat is doubt- 
 less a very excellent subject (to the State, 
 I mean, if these are all his children), but not 
 for your art, Mr. Romney, if you mean to 
 pursue it with that success which I hope will 
 attend you." This picture was turned with 
 its face to the wall, Romney's natural 
 feeling for good grouping was checked, and 
 such pictures as that which he and his son
 
 discovered at Barfield in 1798 were for the 
 future unlikely. This picture " represents 
 a party consisting of three gentlemen and 
 two ladies going on board a boat on a lake. 
 The ladies show great timidity, so natural to 
 the female character under the impression 
 of danger, which expression is irequently 
 accompanied by a certain degree of grace, 
 but are politely urged by their attendant 
 gallants. The colouring is beautifully clear, 
 and as fresh as if recently painted. The 
 execution evinces great facility and freedom 
 of handling, and the touches are spirited and 
 neat." This appears to have been one of the 
 pictures exhibited in the Town Hall at Ken- 
 dal and purchased by lottery when Romney 
 was struggling to pay his way to London. 
 
 Dr. Johnson called Reynolds the most 
 invulnerable of men ; on the other hand we 
 may regard Romney 's feelings, when exposed 
 to harsh criticism, as easily ruffled as the 
 surface of open water upon which the rough 
 north wind rushes to break up all placidity. 
 
 We shall speak elsewhere of the charm and 
 delicacy of his brushwork and the smooth- 
 ness of his canvas. So far we have simply 
 traced the characteristics of his work, and to
 
 ioo Romney 
 
 go further would involve more elaborate 
 explanation and wider reference. 
 
 In 1789, when Wesley was eighty-six 
 years old, he said : " At the earnest desire 
 of Mrs. T., I once more sat for my picture. 
 Mr. Romney is a painter, indeed ! He struck 
 off an exact likeness at once, and did more in 
 an hour than Sir Joshua did in ten." 
 
 Grace, simplicity, conscientiousness, class- 
 icism (after his return from Italy), senti- 
 ment but, above all, elegance and grace, 
 seem to be the characteristics of George 
 Romney's art. So far he is too little 
 known to be truly estimated ; but it may 
 be that in the fulness of time the world of 
 art will not so readily assign him the third 
 place among the portrait painters of the 
 eighteenth century. Two of them have so 
 long been accepted as the leaders that it 
 seems heresy to suggest their displacement ; 
 yet the wheel of judgment is ever revolving, 
 in art more especially, and later generations 
 may accept Wesley's statement and, saying, 
 " Mr. Romney is a painter, indeed, "assign 
 their preference in a similar manner for this 
 hitherto but little understood artist.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE QUALITY OF THE ARTIST. 
 
 WHILE it may be comparatively easy to say 
 of certain artists that they were influenced 
 by this or that school of painting, or fell 
 under the sway of one or the other of the 
 great masters ; while we can follow out 
 by means of memoirs or biography the 
 evidences of contemporary opinion with 
 regard to a Sir Joshua Reynolds or a Turner, 
 yet when we apply these considerations to 
 George Romney we are met with difficulties 
 that mark him out for special treatment. 
 This is largely due to the fact that he was a 
 recluse. Reynolds, for example, figures 
 here and there in the social and political life 
 of his day. He possessed influential friends 
 who could spread his praise abroad. Con- 
 temporary opinion plays freely and flatter- 
 ingly around his name. As President of the 
 Royal Academy he was surrounded by 
 
 10 1
 
 102 Romney 
 
 satellites who caught and reflected lustre, 
 and, in their orbits, spread the glory of his 
 name from pole to pole. The public, which 
 after all is the determining factor of a man's 
 reputation, saw the works of Reynolds in the 
 Academy and conferred upon him (no doubt 
 under the coaxing guidance of the skilled 
 critic) the just praise which the pictures 
 merited. But in almost every respect 
 Romney seems to fail us when we search for 
 contemporary judgment. He moves almost 
 like a shadow across the years in which he 
 lived, leaving not a trace behind. The 
 reason for this lies partly in his own tempera- 
 ment, and partly in the circumstances of 
 his life. We suppose that only those who 
 have missed early opportunities, and, 
 awakening to the fact in later life, endeavour 
 strenuously to make good what ought to 
 have been accomplished in childhood and 
 youth, can realise the manner in which the 
 intercourse and social activities usually 
 common to manhood and maturity are 
 shut off from such a life. The very fact 
 that Romney stood outside the Academy 
 meant far more than such an attitude would 
 imply in later times. It meant that while
 
 Quality of (he Artist 103 
 
 the great public knew intimately the work 
 of Reynolds and Gainsborough, for example, 
 Romney was unknown. Royalty, which 
 exercised so great a power in those days, 
 might smile upon his genius, but he would 
 not know it. This quiet man, whose sole 
 recreation was to employ his spare hours in 
 studying the sister arts to painting, or to 
 work by candle-light at the designs and 
 conceptions prompted by his fruitful 
 imagination, merely joined in later life a 
 small club called " The Unincreasables," and 
 formed with contemporary artists no intimate 
 association except with John Flaxman, 
 whom he befriended so magnanimously, 
 and a few of the men who became his pupils. 
 Yet this was the man who numbered among 
 his sitters six of the members of Pitt's 
 Administration, including the Prime Minister 
 himself ; who, notoriously aloof from Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds, so attracted people to his 
 canvas that we find one after the other of the 
 great Johnsonian Circle, of which Reynolds 
 was so conspicuous a member, coming to sit 
 for their portraits Johnson himself,* Burke, 
 
 * The portrait of Johnson in Trinity College, 
 Oxford, is attributed to Romney.
 
 104 Romney 
 
 Garrick, Goldsmith,* and Gibbon. Starting 
 in 1776 Romney kept a diary of his sitters 
 and continued it till 1795. Messrs. Ward 
 and Roberts, in their excellent volumes on 
 Romney, give these sittings, printed in three 
 columns to a page. Estimating these 
 sittings, which occupy fifty pages, at 230 to 
 a page, we find that spread over these 
 nineteen years there were, roughly speaking, 
 between eleven thousand and twelve thou- 
 sand sittings " an amazing mass of work." 
 Romney spared himself in no way. Some- 
 times he would receive five or six sitters a 
 day, and, working only too rapidly, he 
 usually finished a portrait in three or four 
 sittings. As we have shown, included among 
 these sitters were the elite of the society of 
 those days. But it would seem that as a 
 man Romney made no impressions upon this 
 fashionable and influential group of people. 
 They came to him because they realised his 
 powers, and desired to employ him for their 
 own purpose they regarded the artist rather 
 as a portrait painter than as a man, and, 
 
 * This portrait was exhibited at an exhibition 
 of Old Masters in 1877 as a Reynolds, but experts 
 held that it was a Romney.
 
 Quality of the Artist 105 
 
 when they left his studio, they were done 
 with him ; some to such a degree that they 
 did not even pay for the work he had 
 accomplished ! 
 
 When Reynolds passed away there were 
 those who could hand on the story of his 
 life and labours ; when Romney died the 
 task of biography fell, unfortunately, to the 
 pen of one better able to talk about himself 
 than about the artist. Reynolds' pictures 
 were seen exhibited in public places ; 
 Romney's pictures were scattered here and 
 there about the kingdom, hidden for the 
 most part in piivate houses and country 
 mansions, and the nation little knew, or even 
 yet knows, its heavy loss and its splendid 
 gain. 
 
 There is no doubt whatever that Romney's 
 temperament was a difficult one for people 
 to get to know and understand. Ozias 
 Humphry was a great friend of his, and 
 accompanied him to Rome, but they 
 separated, Romney to plunge into the 
 studies which he had come to Italy to 
 prosecute. It is said that his ruling passion 
 was ambition to succeed. There are different 
 pathways to fame. It often happens, how-
 
 io6 Romney 
 
 ever, in this world, that the portal to fame is 
 more easily found in the halls of the great 
 and powerful than in the study or the studio. 
 Romney refused, for reasons best known to 
 himself, to seek greatness by facile speech 
 or flattering tongue. To some extent later 
 generations have justified his attitude ; it 
 may be justified even more definitely by our 
 posterity. But it is evident that his aloof- 
 ness led to an absence of sympathetic public 
 opinion, and that, so far as contemporary 
 art was concerned, we may infer with some 
 probability of fairness that he exerted but 
 little influence upon its development. 
 Furthermore, for nearly fifty years after his 
 death his genius lay under an undeserved 
 obscurity, and was only revealed in its full 
 brightness when Ruskin began to preach the 
 virtue of the Pre-Raphaelite. 
 
 It may be argued that, while Romney was 
 most unfortunate in his loss of early training, 
 he was nevertheless happy in coming to Lon- 
 don when he did. We may deplore the fact 
 that he did not live later ; it is certainly well 
 that he did not live earlier. His wonderful 
 gift of portrait painting suited his age and 
 the social life of the latter half of the
 
 Quality of the Artist 107 
 
 eighteenth century. George the Second had 
 not loved " boetry " nor " bainting ; " his 
 aesthetic tastes were employed in other 
 directions ; but his grandson, George the 
 Third, displayed sympathy towards the 
 arts, while Sir Joshua Reynolds had, by his 
 consummate genius, drawn the attention of 
 society to the development of British Art. 
 The stream of fashionable folk who sat for 
 Reynolds and Romney shows how society 
 had come to view the artist. We believe 
 that this fact had much to do with Romney 's 
 attitude toward art and with the attitude of 
 the public towards him as an artist. In 
 painting, as well as in poetry, there is a sort 
 of idealised realism, and very many people 
 are attracted consciously, or unconsciously, 
 by the glamour thrown by the artist, 
 whether he paint with brush or with pen, 
 over the subject of his art. As Browning 
 says through the mouth of Fra Lippo Lippi : 
 
 For, don't you mark, we're made so that we love 
 First, when we see them painted, things we have 
 
 passed 
 
 Perhaps a hundred times, nor cared to see ; 
 And so they're better, painted better to us 
 Which is the same thing, art was given for that. 
 
 That is true of most people ; it is more
 
 io8 Romney 
 
 true that the eclectic art of the painter and 
 poet often transforms the unattractive and 
 presents, as it were, an etherealised view 
 which captures admiration. Juvenal may 
 exclaim : Quidprodest . . . pictosque ostendere 
 vultus majorum. The ancestors and the 
 descendants glory in a presentation that 
 pays a compliment to their line. It may be 
 partly true that there are grounds for the 
 criticism mildly urged against Romney to 
 the effect that there is a certain sameness in 
 his faces, that the blue eyes of one portrait 
 shine like the eyes of another ; or as D. S. 
 MacColl* puts it : " He merely moved the 
 parts of the mask a little about so that the 
 features by their spacing might approach 
 to a ' likeness ' and that there is, as it were, 
 a sort of conformation to type." As we 
 shall see, the criticism can be met with 
 another suggestion : that a generation of 
 portrait lovers was pleased to find a man 
 who could flatter so subtly, and it admired 
 his flattery. Hence the " amazing mass of 
 work " from his brush. He discovered in 
 Italy the grace with which he clothed his 
 
 * Saturday Review, June gth, 1900.
 
 Quality of the A rtist 109 
 
 later portraits, and, upon his return from the 
 sunny south, the " stiff and formal painter of 
 Newport Street developed into the free and 
 charming painter of Cavendish Square." 
 The public recognised the alteration and 
 was quick to take full advantage of his 
 skill. 
 
 Yet while that generation rejoiced in the 
 subtle flattery of Romney's art, and we love 
 the winsome charms displayed in his feminine 
 faces, we must recollect that this great artis 4 : 
 did more than flatter, which, after all, is a 
 fault (if it be a fault) found in other artists 
 than Romney. If his women and children 
 possess grace, his men sitters possess 
 dignity and power. Romney may have 
 idealized, but we may feel certain that 
 behind that idealism there was a strict 
 adherence to truth which was very con- 
 vincing. It was a Romney that led Horace 
 Walpole to exclaim : 
 
 Full many an artist has on canvas fix'd 
 All charms that nature's pencil ever miss'd ; 
 The witchery of eyes, the grace that tips 
 The inexpressible douceur of the lips 
 Romney alone, in this fair image caught 
 Each charm's expression, and each feature's thought, 
 And shows how in their sweet assemblage sit 
 Taste, Spirit, Softness, Sentiment, and Wit.
 
 1 10 Romney 
 
 And, judging from the scarcity of Walpole's 
 references to Romney, we may infer that 
 these lines were written to please Lady 
 Craven rather than Romney. Yet we can 
 match their acknowledgment of Romney's 
 power to depict feminine beauty with 
 Richard Cumberland's poetic tribute, and 
 William Cowper's heartfelt sonnet, both of 
 which show delight in the delineation of 
 masculine features. Old John Wesley's 
 written tribute is referred to elsewhere. Let 
 it be admitted that Romney was a less 
 learned man than Reynolds, that he could 
 not read character so clearly as his great 
 rival, that he lacked anatomical knowledge ; 
 he was yet able to see his sitters with an eye 
 that was lacking to others of his con- 
 temporaries and had a power of rendering 
 their features with a sympathetic touch that 
 dwelt with the portrait for all time. " He 
 best can paint 'em who shall feel 'em most," 
 sings Pope. One believes that in many 
 instances Romney had more sympathetic 
 feeling behind his brush, and that, while he 
 was one of the simplest of painters, he was 
 also one of the most artistic in his methods 
 and his productions. His methods were his
 
 National Gallery 
 
 &rtf& V?n4.ttf 
 George Romney
 
 Quality of the Artist ill 
 
 own. This self-made artist deviated but 
 little from the early principles of his art. 
 These principles were the outcome of his 
 own experiment and his own initiative. He 
 stands out in his day as a man who borrowed 
 little or nothing in the matter of precept 
 from any earlier, or any contemporary 
 masters. That he was influenced later on 
 in life one allows ; that he was ever anything 
 other than deeply original in his conceptions 
 of art, or that he borrowed from any special 
 school, one cannot admit. 
 
 Those who go to Romney's pictures find a 
 sweetness and a grace which infuse the 
 loveliness with which he was in love, to an 
 extent difficult to express ; that is the 
 quality which has been described as " essen- 
 tially his own." The very simplicity he 
 depicts is captivating in itself, but the art 
 of the painter is seen still more in the setting 
 of his subject in those " large unfrittered 
 designs " which were the result of his being 
 born a genius in the matter of design 
 unf adeji colour, in those simple tints he loved 
 so much loveliness, human beauty, natural 
 pose, the superb arrangement and delineation 
 of draperies all these combined with the
 
 H2 Romney 
 
 glimpse of dignity that so frequently 
 characterizes his portraits, are just a few of 
 those features which quite naturally charm 
 the amateur. As we look at a Romney we 
 often exclaim, " How natural it is ! " 
 
 For example, nobody who contrasts 
 Thomas Gainsborough's Mrs. Bowaier with 
 George Romney 's Lady Milncs can fail to 
 be struck by the difference in the treatment.* 
 Charming as is the portrait by Gainsborough, 
 with its evidence of the power and skill of 
 the artist's genius, as one turns to Romney's 
 Lady Milnes the beauty and grace of his 
 picture completely efface the impressions 
 left by the Gainsborough. The " call " of 
 the picture is unmistakable. Without for 
 one moment implying that the Gainsborough 
 is false, one undoubtedly feels that the 
 Romney is immensely more human, more 
 living. The Gainsborough seems to suggest 
 the manner and dress of a Watteau pastoral. 
 Whether it is an idealised face that turns to 
 gaze at us from the Romney, or whether it 
 is a true, speaking likeness does not matter, 
 
 * Reproductions of these two pictures, now in the 
 Frick Collection, America, axe given in Mr. W. 
 Roberts' article at South Kensington Library.
 
 Quality of the Artist 113 
 
 but there upon the canvas is a woman's 
 figure, dressed in a plain brown satin dress, 
 of which the bodice gracefully lies around 
 the softly moulded breast, and the skirt 
 drops in rich folds to where the dainty 
 ankles peep so naturally above the little 
 shoes pressed lightly on the ground. The 
 rich train flows sweeping away. Upon her 
 head lies tilted, at a charmingly coquettish 
 angle, a big picture-hat covered with 
 splendid plumes of white ostrich feathers. 
 The lady's left arm is advanced so that 
 the slender hand may rest its finger-tips 
 upon a pillar. The white puffed sleeve 
 lies directly in a line under the white 
 feathers and between them comes the white 
 glow of the skin of the face and neck. There 
 is not only womanly grace, but there is, as 
 it were, feminine sovereignty in the whole 
 poise ; yet it is just that sovereignty which, 
 one realizes, might so easily melt into human 
 love and joy. When these two pictures lie 
 side by side one wonders how ever it can 
 have been that this artist who could paint 
 so captivatingly the grace and charm of the 
 women of his age could have lived so long 
 under a cloud. One does not at all wonder 
 I
 
 114 Romney 
 
 at the readiness of the Americans to acquire 
 Romney's portraits : one only marvels at 
 the fact that our nation so readily parts 
 with its inheritance. In this picture of 
 Lady Milnes (a member of the Bentinck 
 family) one understands the truth of the 
 saying that, while Reynolds is often stagey 
 and theatrical, and Gainsborough endues 
 his sitters with a dignity which, if it is true 
 to life, must have made the originals difficult 
 persons to get on with, Romney's whole- 
 lengths are essentially human. In the 
 portrait of Lady Isabella Hamilton one gets 
 a sort of parallel to Lady Milnes' picture. 
 There is the same feminine loveliness, true 
 womanliness, and reality. The two portraits 
 are, so to speak, companionable. 
 
 It has been pointed out that the fashions 
 of the day, the low-cut bodices, frilled or 
 draped round the bosom, frilled again at the 
 wrists ; the high-waisted skirts, full-trained 
 and flowing in Grecian style round the feet, 
 were all in Romney's favour. John Flax- 
 man bears direct tribute to the artistic skill 
 of the man he admired so much : "He 
 practised no deception to gain popularity. 
 When he began to paint he had seen no
 
 Quality of the Artist 115 
 
 gallery of pictures, nor fine productions of 
 ancient sculpture, but men, women and 
 children were his statues and all objects 
 under the cope of heaven formed his school of 
 painting. . . . Indeed, his genius bore a 
 strong resemblance to the scenes he was 
 born in ; like them, it partook of the grand 
 and beautiful ; and like them also, the 
 bright sunshine and enchanting prospects of 
 his fancy were occasionally overspread with 
 mist and gloom. ... As Romney was gifted 
 with peculiar powers for historical and ideal 
 painting, so his heart and soul were engaged 
 in the pursuit of it whenever he could 
 extricate himself from the important busi- 
 ness of portrait painting. It was his delight 
 by day and study by night, and for this his 
 food and rest were often neglected." With 
 regard to the drapery of Romney, Flaxman 
 says that it was " well understood, either 
 forming the figure into a mass with one or 
 two deep folds only, or by its adhesion and 
 transparency discovering the form of the 
 figure, the lines of which were finely varied 
 with the trains or expansions of spiral or 
 cascade folds, composing with or contrasting 
 the outline and chiaroscuro : he was so
 
 passionately fond of Grecian sculpture that 
 he filled his study and galleries with fine 
 casts from the most perfect statues, basso- 
 relievos and busts of antiquity : he would 
 sit and consider these in profound silence by 
 the hour." 
 
 The spectator so often feels as he looks at 
 a Romney that he is not simply looking at 
 a portrait, but at a picture. It is true that 
 the costumes of the day fell in with the 
 artist's study of Grecian simplicity ; but 
 he combined effect with grace, and grace 
 with circumstance. He admitted that he 
 knew little of anatomy and he is most 
 severely criticised from the point of view of 
 his draughtsmanship. It is urged that his 
 forms are apt to be unmodelled and " bone- 
 less ; " that his hands lack character ; that 
 his figures have no depth or roundness. And 
 the same critic who draws attention to these 
 charges, asks himself almost in the manner 
 of an Old Testament writer : " Who would 
 desire to count the ribs of beauty ; or take 
 thought for the muscular contraction of a 
 soft, rounded arm ? "* 
 
 * R. C. Witt in The Nineteenth Century.
 
 Quality of the Artist 117 
 
 Romney employs the soft powdered hair 
 of the day with the tilt of the picture hat, 
 or folds of the large mob cap, to form a 
 gentle contrast with a soft background of 
 brown trees, and subdued light from clouded 
 skies. The man puts into his portraits 
 what he has not borrowed from others but 
 derived from himself that indefinable some- 
 thing which goes to constitute what we call 
 a " Romney." And who can precisely say 
 what that is ? We are told of Raphael 
 Mengs, Romney's German contemporary, 
 that his object was to gather the expression 
 of Raphael, the colour of Titian, the 
 chiaroscuro of Correggio, and the drawing of 
 ancient sculpture. One cannot for a moment 
 think of Romney in such terms. Just as 
 the mind of Shakespeare took in the literary 
 material he borrowed and in the crucible of 
 his intellect transformed it into something 
 essentially his own, so Romney, the poet- 
 painter, gives us the pure essence of his own 
 artistic imagery. More than any other 
 painter Romney grasped the fleeting spirit 
 of beauty, and he remains for us both seer 
 and poet in this realm of his art. That is why 
 we refer to him as a great possession of the
 
 Ii8 Romney 
 
 English school of painters ; that is why he 
 survived the lapse of fifty years and the 
 neglect of a nation, to emerge into ever- 
 increasing fame ; that is why we feel that 
 the general public who certainly has no 
 desire " to count the ribs of beauty " will 
 continue, the more it sees, the more to 
 admire his pictures. It is to be deplored 
 that he employed bitumen, so that in our 
 time we meet with canvases that are 
 darkened and blistered, bearing their elo- 
 quent testimony against this fault. But 
 somebody has adapted the remark of Sir 
 George Beaumont made in reference to 
 Reynolds, and has put it that " a faded 
 portrait by Romney is better than a fresh one 
 by anyone else." However, we submit the 
 argument that for Romney's pictures to fade 
 is fatal, for pre-eminently in their colour lies 
 much of their charm. We propose, there- 
 fore, at this juncture to summarise the views 
 of modern critics, and endeavour to ascertain 
 what it is that wins the admiration of the 
 ordinary spectator for a Romney. 
 
 Romney in his originality is essentially 
 English. He was the painter who best 
 reflected the sentiment of the age in which
 
 Quality of the Artist 119 
 
 he lived, and he does this with elegance 
 and grace. In his art, as we have shown, 
 he absorbs and employs for his purpose the 
 charm of the costume of the period. In 
 picture after picture we come across the 
 simple white drapery, with perhaps a ribbon, 
 or a waistband, of blue (of which he is 
 fond),* or it may be green. One critic, as 
 we have remarked, says that Romney 
 " merely moved the parts of the mask " and 
 gives us the same type of face again and 
 again. It seems almost needless to point 
 out that such a criticism can be applied to 
 other great portrait painters as well as to 
 Romney. The mere novice learns to 
 recognise certain types common to great 
 artists, and recognises the period when the 
 portrait was painted not only by the attire 
 but by the countenance of the subject. A 
 visit to the National Portrait Gallery to see 
 Sir Peter Lely's pictures will confirm this 
 statement. As one stands before the 
 portrait of Anna Maria Brudenell, Countess 
 of Shrewsbury, and that of Eleanor Gwyn, 
 it is clear that Mr. D. C. McColl's criticism of 
 
 * E.g., In the charming portrait of Mrs. Robert 
 Trotter of Bush (National Gallery).
 
 I2O Romney 
 
 Romney is equally true of this earlier artist. 
 The two women might almost be sisters, 
 according to feature and appearance. 
 
 Another critic speaking of Romney puts 
 it that we find constantly the " same eyes, 
 nose, and mouth . . . the straight well- 
 defined eyebrows, the large melting eyes and 
 softly curved lips occur again and again,"* 
 because his lodestar in beauty was Lady 
 Hamilton. The thought comes at times 
 whether this type of beauty was simply that 
 of Lady Hamilton, or whether it was partly 
 hers and partly something that existed in 
 Romney's mind. The photographic copy of 
 the intaglio by Rega, done by him towards 
 the end of the eighteenth century, does not 
 entirely suggest that winsome, smiling grace 
 one meets so often in Romney's pictures of 
 Lady Hamilton. It is quite probable that 
 Romney brought his ideal into his workman- 
 ship; that there was something manifestly 
 exceptional about the " divine lady " is 
 attested to from so many quarters. 
 Reynolds, Madame Vigee le Brun, Angelica 
 Kauffmann, and Italian painters and 
 
 * R. C. Witt in The Nineteenth Century.
 
 Quality of the Artist 121 
 
 sculptors, all tried their skill upon her ; but 
 it is Romney alone who catches that 
 witchery, that delicate archness so definitely 
 associated with his portraits of her, and it 
 may well be that either he saw what they 
 could not see, or that her beauty awoke in 
 him suggestions of his youth which, like the 
 morning light resting upon the countryside, 
 bestowed a freshness and a fragrance all its 
 own. 
 
 The pose and the costume of Romney's 
 portraits are often of the most studied 
 simplicity, and suggestive of youth and 
 naturalness. He was painting in a transition 
 period when the artificial wig and hoop were 
 giving place to classical fillet and gown. 
 His portraits, apart from his type of 
 beauty, are not imaginative in execution. 
 The sitter was painted as seen. Even in the 
 Hamilton portraits all the accessories are 
 actual copies, and so true in this that 
 Romney seems to forestall the modern 
 realist. Thus he appears to us less anti- 
 quated than his contemporaries and so 
 makes a direct appeal to our sympathy. 
 While he will not live as a painter of historical 
 or imaginative subjects, yet in his character
 
 122 Romney 
 
 of the portrait painter of the charm and 
 grace of his day, and able to invest even that 
 with subtle and delicate interest, Romney 
 must continue to live, for his portraits will 
 always reach the heart, even though they 
 may not appeal to the intellect. 
 
 Yet it is worth while to draw attention to 
 the fact that even the portraits of Emma 
 Hamilton offer interesting studies in the 
 matter of face and feature. For example, 
 anyone who will compare Emma Hamilton 
 in a Black Hat (painted in 1792), and Emma 
 Hamilton in Morning Dress (1786), with the 
 face of Emma when she represents Comedy 
 in Shakespeare Nursed by Tragedy and 
 Comedy (1791), cannot fail to be struck by 
 the difference. The two former suggest a 
 face which is somewhat rounded, full, a little 
 inclined to be heavy, with less of the 
 spiritual and more of the material and yet 
 hinting at the childlike. The face in each 
 of these instances is placid, and the nose is 
 inclined to be broad and somewhat retrouss6. 
 In the picture of Comedy we come again to 
 that other face, elf-like, full of laughter and 
 spirit, with a suggestion of piquancy, 
 melting into light laughter, with the nose
 
 Quality of the Artist 123 
 
 long and straight and the chin pointed the 
 sort of face that looks out at us from dozens 
 of portraits. The former type approximates 
 somewhat to the intaglio by Rega, the 
 Italian artist ; the latter, we suggest, is 
 Emma Hamilton idealised by Romney and 
 conforming to a type which one is inclined 
 to think is partly hinted at in portraits 
 painted by Romney before he ever met with 
 the " divine lady." 
 
 Is it possible that in many of Romney's 
 portraits, both earlier than, and contem- 
 porary with, the time of Emma's appearance 
 in the studio, we have a persistent type 
 which came to him earlier in life, even, 
 perhaps, before he left the north for London ? 
 In the long, slightly aquiline nose, arched 
 eye-brows and full curved lips bordering on 
 laughter and always smiling, it may be that 
 we have a type of feminine beauty that the 
 boy, and young man, met with frequently 
 in the north-west country whence he came. 
 Certain it is that it is possible for the 
 theoriser to read into the portrait of Mrs. 
 Maxwell painted in 1780, or of Miss Woodley 
 (painted that same year) something of the 
 same rich expression, something of the same
 
 124 Romney 
 
 idea of features which we are wont to 
 associate with the woman who first came to 
 him in 1782. In fact, to say that Romney 
 always paints the same face, but only moves 
 the parts of the mask a little, is not accurate. 
 One can cite more than one type. It may 
 be that anyone who cared to do so could 
 classify Romney's women-faces into groups 
 of which there were certainly three, and 
 probably more. One may mention that 
 Mrs. Ann Pitt (1788), Lady Sligo (1788), and 
 Mrs. Tickell (1791) have the shortened 
 retrousse nose clearly differentiated from the 
 long pointed nose so often met with in other 
 portraits, e.g., Mrs. Robinson. 
 
 In the next place one notices the lure of 
 colour in Romney's work. Whatever else 
 Steele taught him, he certainly showed him 
 how to grind and mix colour. In his pictures 
 (except those where bitumen has wrought 
 havoc or restoration too zealously applied 
 has hidden original colour under the gleam 
 of varnish) one discovers a singularly pure 
 sweet tone and that is true of his pictures 
 throughout, from his earliest to his latest. 
 There is a lofty artistic feeling in his colours 
 which combined with his simplicity one of
 
 Quality of the Artist 125 
 
 his chief characteristics attracts the eye and 
 claims sympathy. He outlines grace and 
 dignity, physical beauty and power, in 
 colours that are laid so finely on the picture 
 that we can see the twilled canvas (which he 
 nearly always employed) beneath the pig- 
 ment as, for example, in that magnificent 
 group The Beaumont Family at the National 
 Gallery. In the bent leg of the man who is 
 leaning on the back of the chair upon which 
 the lady is sitting one can see how thinly 
 the artist has spread his paint. As for this 
 picture, one cannot but marvel at its 
 retained freshness. Splendid in colouring 
 and grouping, it looks almost as though it 
 had but yesterday left the artist's studio. 
 
 From the point of view of technique 
 Romney had the great faculty of painting 
 his figures simply and directly. He prepared 
 his own pigments with a thoroughness born 
 of the ardour which his work invariably 
 inspired in him, with the result that his 
 portraits, generally speaking, retain this 
 pristine freshness and charm which the 
 ravages of time have left untouched. In 
 this respect his work compares favourably 
 with that of his great contemporaries and
 
 126 Romney 
 
 rivals who so often, by means of gla/ing, 
 created a fascinating brilliance which was 
 only temporary, as may be well illustrated 
 by the present dull and spiritless state of 
 some of the paintings of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 
 For this reason we can go to Romney 's 
 pictures almost as though they were being 
 newly displayed, and judge clearly the charm 
 of the original work. His brushwork was 
 direct, each stroke left a trace on the 
 canvas. There is no stippling, or glazing, 
 or even working up, in his best work, and it 
 is only fair that we should judge him by that. 
 We can see in some of his pictures evidence 
 of rapid work that has been left just as it 
 was accomplished, and not even retouched. 
 One may cite in this connection the Lady 
 with the Child on Her Lap as shown in the 
 picture in the National Gallery. We say, 
 therefore, that he excelled in the grinding 
 and mixing of his colours, and though his 
 palette does not compare with those of his 
 rivals in extent, he scores over them from 
 the technical point of view by reason of 
 its permanence. There are, of course, 
 eminent critics to whom Romney makes no 
 appeal, and who express their lack of
 
 Qualify of the Artist 127 
 
 admiration pretty strongly ; but the general 
 public, lacking close knowledge of those 
 features for which the critic, from force of 
 training, searches first of all, sees the charm 
 in the graceful, easy serenity of Romney's 
 figures, and feels the pleasing effects of his 
 colours. Romney may be shallow in his 
 effects, but he inevitably charms with his 
 favourite blending of softened white and 
 blue of robes, softly powdered hair, and 
 background of trees in brown. As time 
 went on he tended to abandon the chiaro- 
 scuro effects of the old masters, with the 
 brown background which was favoured by 
 Reynolds, and he became inclined to adopt 
 light greys and greens. 
 
 It has been pointed out that in some 
 essentials the early Romney is the later 
 Romney. The figures of his early works 
 are somewhat hard and stiff, while his 
 colour scheme is not always harmonious ; 
 but after his visits to France and Italy, 
 when the spell of the influence of Correggio 
 and Parmigiano had fallen upon him, he 
 mellowed and refined his work. Yet, all 
 through his career his innate genius is felt 
 in its original impulse. Romney, as we
 
 128 Romney 
 
 know, was born and reared in the lake 
 district, and in his youth and early manhood 
 he studied nature in all her purity, and 
 revelled in the glories of nature's moods as 
 they clothed the hillsides of his native 
 country with robes of purple and green and 
 violet. His eye rested again and again on 
 the richness of the sunset, which, when it 
 paints the clouds in glorious hues, so often 
 makes the ordinary beholder envy the power 
 of the painter. To a man so quick to 
 perceive, and so burning with enthusiasm, 
 this perception must have been more than a 
 real joy, it was something that entered into 
 his very soul to become part of it. The 
 result is reflected in work where our eyes are 
 satisfied by a perfectly blended harmony of 
 colour which is luminous without being 
 exaggerated, and stands before us unforced 
 and natural. We accept as indisputably 
 true such remarks as " he lived for his art, 
 and the more he painted the greater was his 
 flow of spirits." " He was in love with art 
 and in love with loveliness." We accept, 
 unmoved, the assertion that he was less 
 learned than Reynolds, yet we question the 
 statement that he did not explore below the
 
 Quality of the Artist 129 
 
 surface to discern character, but willingly 
 accepted what he found written upon the 
 face. One admits that Romney employed 
 sympathy rather than philosophy, gathering, 
 wherever he could find it, the freshness and 
 innocency of youth, the glow of life, 
 especially the grace of dawning maturity 
 unspoiled as yet by the severe lines and 
 blemishing defects that come with years and 
 the growth of passion. This phase he 
 painted with that self-restraint which 
 checked any search for complex effect or for 
 hazardous experiment. He was a classicist, 
 and being full of ideas with regard to the 
 dignity of art, he wove these ideas into the 
 subject of his brush. If only in his youth 
 he could have read and learned, in con- 
 junction with the teachings of nature, the 
 canons of art, if only in later life he could 
 have become absorbed in the works of the 
 great dramatists and poets, so that their 
 inspiration might have intermarried with 
 his genius for interpretation, we might have 
 received from his hands a greatness not 
 simply of charm but blended with the 
 strength of the very loftiest powers of the 
 artist. It is worth noticing, as we pass, 
 K
 
 130 Romney 
 
 that, while Hayley says it may be questioned 
 if Romney ever read without interruption 
 two acts of the drama which he cordially 
 admired, Colonel James Romney, the brother 
 of the artist, wrote to say that Mr. Romney, 
 their father, was a great reader who could 
 borrow many works from his neighbours; 
 and he adds that George had these and read 
 them with peculiar pleasure. What is 
 apparent is that, owing to his early lack of 
 training and his subsequent endeavours to 
 overtake time, the artist had little time in 
 his maturity to allow reading to proceed 
 hand in hand with his imaginative faculties. 
 With regard to Romney 's power to discern 
 and reveal what lay behind, as well as what 
 was depicted by the features, we offer the 
 four following accounts of four portraits, 
 and make the suggestion that many other 
 pictures might easily be cited to show the 
 very opposite to the criticism that Romney 
 did not read character. 
 
 (a) The simpering expression of the spoiled 
 beauty pervades the portrait of the famous 
 Mrs. Blair (1787), the bosom friend of 
 Kitty, Marchioness of Queensbury. On the
 
 Qualify of the Arlist 131 
 
 over -dressed hair is set the fashionable, be- 
 feathered Gainsborough hat, and the whole 
 surmounts a face broad and high of forehead, 
 yet showing in the somewhat narrow eyes 
 and long nose an absence of depth of 
 character. The mouth is elongated, with 
 lips neither full nor thin but slightly scornful, 
 as though the flattery, with its obvious 
 insincerity, scarce satisfied. The gown, 
 ruffled over a tightly-laced waist and high 
 bosom, remind one that subservience to the 
 creed of fashion is no new trait in woman's 
 character. Here is one of those many 
 women who say " Better be artificial and in 
 fashion, than true to life and unfashionable." 
 As we look at this portrait we think of a 
 tame but spoiled cat that must be constantly 
 stroked, fussed and fed regularly with 
 cream and tit-bits. 
 
 (b) Romney's portrait of Wesley was 
 painted at the request of Mrs. Tighe, an 
 ardent admirer of the great preacher. As we 
 regard this splendid face, with its broad, 
 scholarly brow, strong firm mouth curved 
 with humour, the long and somewhat 
 prominent nose proclaiming powerful
 
 132 Rotnncy 
 
 character, and the eyes wide apart but 
 revealing a somewhat dreamy gaze sugges- 
 tive at once of the mystic and of the deep 
 searcher of the human heart, the thought 
 comes that here is a portrait worthy of both 
 the painter and the painted. The long 
 white locks lie loosely on the shoulders and 
 harmonise with the gentle serenity of the 
 face the face of an old man who has 
 climbed the dangerous ascents of life and 
 reached the loftiest summit of age, whence 
 he can behold without fear the valley that 
 lies beyond. Although the upward climb 
 has been arduous, yet only sweet com- 
 passion now remains for fellow toilers up 
 life's path. A noble dignity speaks to us 
 from the spiritualised but soldierly features. 
 The expression seems to plead for love and 
 to promise genuine, noble friendship. The 
 strong heats of earlier life have burned down 
 into the calm quiet dignity of age. The 
 light from above falls fully on the placid, 
 smiling countenance as the rays of evening 
 fall upon the calm surface of some river that 
 has left its leaping impulse far behind, and 
 now in wider reaches at the end of its course 
 flows strongly to meet the ocean not far
 
 Quality of the Artist 133 
 
 ahead. Only two years after this portrait 
 was painted Wesley died at the age of 
 eighty-eight. 
 
 (c) A strong contrast to many of Romney 's 
 portraits of women is that of Lady Griffin 
 (Lady Howard de Walden). This portrait 
 was painted in the year 1782-3, about the 
 time, therefore, when Emma was first 
 exerting her charms upon his artistic 
 temperament. The soft and loving grace of 
 womanhood so often felt in Romney 's 
 portraits seems strangely absent as we gaze 
 upon the almost powerful features of Lady 
 Griffin. Undoubtedly this was a woman of 
 strong personality ; her mouth denotes a 
 firmness which boded ill for anybody who 
 chanced to be not entirely on her side. 
 Under the mouth the flesh lies somewhat 
 heavily padded around and under the chin, 
 speaking of a heavy and rather sensual type. 
 The eyes convey a feeling of hardness which 
 is substantiated by the lines of the mouth. 
 Humour is strangely absent ; the mouth 
 smiles, but only with satisfaction. One feels 
 incMned to say, " Griffin by name and griffin 
 by nature ! " The whole portrait suggests
 
 134 Romney 
 
 a stiffness and rigidity, from the head-dress 
 downwards ; even the left hand opens as 
 if to lay down a point in the argument. 
 Surely, Lady Griffin lived too soon. In 
 later days she might have led in powerful 
 wise some modern section of a feminist 
 movement. 
 
 (d) A curious hint of modernity surrounds 
 the portrait of Mrs. Ann Pitt, the best 
 portrait of the type, which appeared about 
 the year 1788. The rounded face is sur- 
 mounted by a mass of thick, softly curling 
 hair which is held in place by a broad white 
 bandeau. Round the wide forehead and 
 over the ears cling escaping tendrils of hair. 
 The expression of the face, tender, appealing 
 and childlike, is accentuated by the upward 
 glance of the full, dark eyes set beneath 
 curved eyebrows. The short retrousse nose, 
 with its arched nostrils, hints at the 
 mischievousness of a child's nature. The 
 mouth, with full and slightly parted lips, 
 completes the delicate study hinted at in 
 the soft, smooth cheeks. 
 
 Sustained effort is always difficult to
 
 Quality of the Artist 135 
 
 maintain. The high standard of excellence 
 demanded from a painter of the first rank 
 can only be continued for a limited period, 
 after which the result is more than likely to 
 be unsatisfactory. As we look at the 
 Sketch Portrait of Lady Hamilton (in the 
 National Gallery) we remember that this 
 woman was of a highly emotional tempera- 
 ment, many-sided in character, possessed a 
 command over facial expression and had all 
 the gifts of an accomplished and trained 
 actress. Romney has caught a passing 
 phase of this mobile model's ever-changing 
 features. If, as Ruskin asserts, " finish is 
 added truth," would this portrait have been 
 of more artistic value, or more pleasing to 
 the eye, had it been finished ? Romney 
 has shown us the wondrous colouring of her 
 hair and skin, of her eyes and lips ; he has 
 captured the beauty of the form of the oval 
 face, soft and bewitching. He reveals the 
 delicate shape of the neck and throat. All 
 these are in the portrait. But above and 
 beyond is the vivacity of the woman 
 suggested in the poise of her head, the flash 
 of the eyes, and the hand clutching the hair, 
 as if the result of a sudden impulse. The
 
 136 Romney 
 
 picture arrests attention. It enables the 
 spectator to realise, in some measure, the 
 magnetic personality of this woman who 
 was composed of such a strange mixture of 
 virtue and vice, and who could exert so 
 powerfully an influence on men who were 
 distinctly opposite in taste and temperament. 
 It should be noted to Lady Hamilton's 
 credit that this subtle and irresistible 
 influence was not always connected with the 
 grosser passions. In some cases it was so, 
 but not in all. As we have seen, her letters to 
 Romney point clearly to an unselfish regard 
 for the man, and to a friendship that was 
 perfectly innocent, and, therefore, quite 
 beyond the average understanding of an age 
 which was not merely complacent and self- 
 satisfied, but to a degree gross and sensual. 
 The study of Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante 
 is one of Romney's best known portraits of 
 his favourite model. In all probability it 
 enables us to form a better conception of 
 her real appearance and witchery of manner 
 than any other of his works. Romney's 
 brush conveys in the colour of cheeks and 
 lips the suggestion of a beautiful pink rose. 
 He shows us her wonderful auburn hair,
 
 Quality of the Artist 137 
 
 wavy and wayward as herself. Blue eyes 
 set wide apart, perfect teeth, and broad 
 forehead speak of beauty as well as of 
 powerful personality. The painter has por- 
 trayed piquancy and daintiness with no 
 suggestion whatever of vulgarity or lack of 
 modesty. One can scarcely regard this 
 charming creature as a devotee of Bacchus. 
 
 The hall-mark of Romney's work is his 
 perfect sincerity and absence of artifice in 
 the method of his painting. This fact 
 stands out strongly in the portrait of the 
 younger Pitt. Romney, as we have said, 
 was trained in the school of nature. His 
 mind and his manner of handling his subject 
 were free from convention. He brought 
 from the north the conceptions of colour he 
 had early formed from a study of the 
 pictures painted there by the Creator of his 
 native fells and dales, of the lakes and meres 
 with their ripples and reflections. In this 
 way he may be said to be a prototype of the 
 Pre-Raphaelites and to have anticipated, by 
 more than a generation, their search for the 
 truth in the matter of colour. 
 
 From the emotional standpoint the art of 
 Romney is seen at its best in his portraiture
 
 138 Romney 
 
 of women and children. Who can compare 
 Reynold's Lady Cockburn and her Children 
 with Romney's Gower Family and fail to be 
 prejudiced in favour of the lesser artist ? 
 The painting of the female figure was to him 
 a real joy, and when his subject was the 
 beautiful woman who became to him an 
 obsession, the subtle charm of her personality 
 and the exquisite beauty and grace of her 
 limbs and features, combined with her 
 unusual histrionic powers, are rendered 
 again and again in his portraits with the 
 same intensity of ardour as when they first 
 ravished and conquered his susceptible 
 nature. 
 
 Romney emulated the highest masters 
 whenever he could spare time from the 
 daily grind of portrait painting ; though 
 his faculty for imparting a tale of grandeur 
 had its limitations, yet his constructive 
 genius was great and convincing. Lord R. 
 Gower says that " if Romney had never 
 painted a portrait his name would even then 
 stand very high among the artists of Britain, 
 for some of his poetic and dramatic compo- 
 sitions are replete with imaginative power." 
 Among those scenes from Shakespeare for
 
 Quality of the Artist 139 
 
 which he had an intense admiration, some 
 are boldly conceived, and executed with the 
 skill and power of a great painter. We may 
 regard imaginative painting as the recreation 
 in which he indulged whenever occasion 
 offered. But his living had to be won in the 
 painting of portraits. Had he been able to 
 devote more time to his favourite delineation 
 of imagery, had his entire training been 
 effective to this end, Romney would not 
 only have been a happier man, but would 
 have left us, in all probability, a canvas 
 equal to the works of the greatest. One of 
 the tragedies of his life seems to be that 
 powerful inclination which towards the close 
 of his life led him to set his mind upon the 
 outline of vast historical and religious 
 compositions without the power to execute 
 them adequately.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ROMNEY'S INFLUENCE ON CONTEMPORARIES 
 AND SUCCESSORS, AND ON PUBLIC TASTE. 
 
 Romney's captivating grace brought a 
 constant train of sitters to his canvas. It is 
 difficult to determine to what extent he 
 influenced contemporary art. Even when 
 one has attempted to answer the question, 
 the suspicion remains that too much or too 
 little has been said. We have referred to 
 the manner in which Romney held aloof from 
 the Royal Academy, and also to the secluded 
 path he trod. From temperament and from 
 lack of earlier opportunities he was inclined 
 to remain largely shut off from social 
 activities and functions. " His art was 
 entirely intimate, personal to himself even 
 more than to his sitters." For our purpose 
 it will be as well to take a brief review of 
 141
 
 142 Romney 
 
 some of those artists who seem more 
 directly to have fallen under Romney 's 
 influence, frankly omitting any attempt to 
 trace any mark of his characteristic traits 
 upon his greater rivals. We read of his 
 copying the pictures of certain of his out- 
 standing contemporaries ; whether they 
 condescended to adopt any lessons from 
 him is a question that must lie beyond the 
 scope of our enquiry. 
 
 When John Flaxman (1755-1826) was 
 introduced to Romney, a bond of sympathy 
 already existed between them. Each had 
 suffered the keenest disappointment at the 
 hands of the famous and powerful President 
 of the Royal Academy of Arts. In 1770 
 Flaxman, who was a student at the Academy 
 School, then in its second year of existence, 
 possessed so much courage and ability that, 
 although he was only a lad of fifteen, he 
 competed for the Gold Medal. He was 
 confident that he would win the coveted 
 prize. Romney had been equally confident 
 when, in the spring of 1763, he had exhibited 
 The Death of General Wolfe. Flaxman just 
 missed the gold medal, which went to 
 Englehart, the miniature painter, and he had
 
 Influence on Contemporaries 143 
 
 to be contented with the silver medal no 
 mean honour for such a youth. As we 
 have remarked elsewhere, Romney was not 
 so successful as the younger man. 
 
 Flaxman and Romney met at the house 
 of a clergyman in Rathbone Place, and this 
 acquaintance developed into an intimate 
 and lasting friendship. " Our dear and 
 worthy Flaxman," says Romney, " whose 
 talents I admire and place before every other 
 artist." The connection of the sculptor 
 with the firm of Wedgwood is well known, 
 and it was his genius as a modeller of 
 ornament, and especially of the human 
 figure, that very materially influenced the 
 current taste and fashion in artistic pottery 
 and made the name of Wedgwood known 
 all over the world. It was now that 
 Romney exercised, consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, a considerable influence over his 
 younger brother in art, and we have already 
 shown how Flaxman expressed in deliberate 
 language his profound admiration for 
 Romney's ability as an exponent of the 
 plastic art, and leads us to believe that, had 
 the artist chosen to do so, he might have be- 
 come equally famous as a modeller or sculp-
 
 144 Romney 
 
 tor, or wood-carver. Flaxman's intimacy 
 with Romney necessarily made the younger 
 man take note of his friend's masterly treat- 
 ment of the figure especially after Romney 
 had studied the antique in Italy. He 
 seems to have imparted some of his love for 
 the antique to his young friend from the very 
 beginning of their association. True it is 
 that the grouping of the figures seen in the 
 masterly modelling work that Flaxman did 
 for Wedgwood was nothing less than the 
 work of a genius, and was beyond and apart 
 from any extraneous influence. But the 
 figure clearly became more graceful under 
 his touch, and the modelling more delicate 
 and subtle, as his friendship with Romney 
 ripened. We should remember that it was 
 not until after most of his personal work for 
 the famous firm of potters had been 
 accomplished that Flaxman visited Italy, 
 and came into direct touch with the work 
 of the great masters, although he had foi 
 many years earnestly desired to do so. He 
 remained in Italy for seven years, studying 
 and perfecting his art. If anyone cares to 
 do so he may draw a parallel with Romney 
 from the fact that Flaxman's work is pure
 
 Influence on Contemporaries 145 
 
 and simple, is executed in the true classic 
 spirit, but at times shows weakness in 
 portraying the stronger emotions. Both 
 Romney and Flaxman were " classically 
 minded," votaries of pure lines, and deep 
 believers in Greek ideals of art. 
 
 Romney had much to do with fashioning 
 the career and developing the artistic ability 
 of Isaac Pocock, who became his pupil in 
 1798 and was the fellow-student of Thomas 
 A. Hayley. It was during one of his pro- 
 longed visits to the elder Hayley that 
 Romney drew the portraits of these two 
 pupils. Under Romney's tuition Pocock 
 progressed so satisfactorily that his pictures 
 were exhibited at the Royal Academy for 
 many years. In 1807 he was awarded a 
 prize of one hundred pounds by the British 
 Institution for a historical painting entitled 
 The Murder of Si, Thomas a Becket. 
 Pocock 's fame was not confined to London. 
 He became a member of the Liverpool 
 Academy, where he exhibited works both in 
 oil and water colours. His native home was 
 Bristol, where his father was well known as 
 a marine painter. An uncle resided in the 
 same town, and, when he died, leaving 
 L
 
 146 Romney 
 
 Isaac a considerable sum of money, the artist 
 was enabled to devote his attention to the 
 dream for which for some time he had 
 possessed a great affection. Henceforth he 
 almost ceased his labours as an artist. He 
 became a playwright and composed many 
 musical comedies, the chief of which was 
 " Hit or Miss." 
 
 The modern student would like to 
 establish some identity of interests or 
 association in art between Benjamin West, 
 the American painter, and George Romney. 
 West was a powerful painter, and a con- 
 temporary of the subject of this book, but 
 one admits that his influence on the English- 
 man was merely negative. As a portrait 
 painter he stood coldly aside through 
 force of circumstances, leaving the field, so 
 far as he was concerned, clear for Romney, 
 while he himself was engaged upon his 
 historical canvases for the King. It would 
 be, one ventures to assert, a difficult task to 
 decide whether Romney or West influenced 
 the other, directly or indirectly. 
 
 One of George Romney's closest com- 
 panions was Ozias Humphry, whose intimate 
 and cordial friendship he enjoyed for many
 
 Influence on Contemporaries 147 
 
 years. Upcott, Humphry's natural son, 
 tells us that for a considerable time the two 
 great artists had studios adjoining, and each 
 must have been the richer from the study 
 of the other's work.* These lodgings were 
 at the Golden Head the usual sign of 
 artists in Great Newpoit Street. Romney 
 painted Humphry's portrait in 1772, at 
 Knole, just before the two friends left 
 England for Rome. They travelled to Italy 
 in a leisurely fashion, for Humphry was at 
 that time a nervous wreck. His recent love 
 affairs had not sped happily. Miss Paine, 
 the daughter of a well-known architect of 
 the time, had jilted him. Subsequently she 
 married Tilly Kettle. 
 
 On reaching Italy, Romney and Humphry 
 continued to live together only for a short 
 time. Romney was reserved, almost austere, 
 anxious, as we have seen, to capture the years 
 that had fled. He studied incessantly. 
 Humphry was a man of fashion who loved 
 society. Thus it was that their paths at 
 this time soon parted, although the spirit of 
 their friendship lived and thrived. When 
 
 * See The Life and Works of Ozias Humphry, R.A., 
 by G. C. Williamson, Litt.D.
 
 148 Romney 
 
 Humphry returned to London, some two 
 years after Romney had resumed his task of 
 portrait-painting, he again picked up the 
 threads of intimate friendship with his 
 travelling companion. They were now often 
 in each other's company. Humphry was 
 elected A.R.A. in 1779. For the most part 
 the two men, so often together, seem to have 
 worked separately for the same reason that 
 prompted each to go his own way in Italy. 
 Romney liked to work in quiet and seclusion ; 
 Humphry loved to be surrounded by men of 
 wit and fashion, whose conversation seems 
 to have inspired rather than hindered him. 
 We must recollect their earlier visits to 
 Knole Park, the seat of the Duke of Dorset, 
 where they both painted pictures which still 
 remain in the mansion (including one of 
 Ozias Humphry by Romney) and can be 
 identified by papers in the possession of the 
 Sackville family. 
 
 These two artists had a real admiration 
 for each other's work. This is evident from 
 the fact that, consciously or unconsciously, 
 they acquired each other's style to a very 
 considerable degree. In 1810, the year of 
 the artist's death, William Upton wrote to
 
 Influence on Contemporaries 149 
 
 a relative of Humphry, saying that he was 
 glad that his godfather's pictures were to be 
 sold with those of George Romney, and that 
 Mr. Christie had in the sale the works of two 
 artists who in their days had been such 
 intimate friends. Ozias has left a record 
 that Romney was " an eminent man and his 
 great friend." These facts are stressed 
 because it was the introduction of a life- 
 sized head of Mrs. Banks by the miniature 
 painter that was of the greatest value in 
 deciding the difference in technique between 
 Romney and Humphry, when, in May, 1917, 
 before Justice Darling, it took six days to 
 prove that the real painter of the portrait of 
 The Three Sisters Waldegrave was Ozias 
 Humphry and not George Romney.* The 
 most eminent authorities were strangely 
 divided in their opinions ; and the case 
 brought out clearly the likeness and affinity 
 between the styles of these two artists. It 
 had been forgotten how Romney and 
 Humphry had been such close friends, living, 
 travelling, and, at times, working side by 
 side. It has even been suggested that 
 
 * See The Cult of Old Paintings. The case wa* 
 reported in Tht Daily Telegraph.
 
 150 Romney 
 
 Romney might have stood by his friend's 
 easel making this or that suggestion, or even 
 taking a brush and executing what his eye 
 saw was desirable. Humphry's work is 
 praised for its refinement, simplicity, correct 
 draughtsmanship and harmonious colouring. 
 Is it too much to assign the development of 
 some of these qualities to the influence of 
 the older and less trained artist ? Ozias in 
 his youth was encouraged and assisted by 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds ; his talent in later life 
 clearly approximated to the methods of 
 Romney. 
 
 When Ozias Humphry returned to London 
 in 1777 he established himself in Rathbone 
 Place, and there, in October of that same 
 year, came to him as a pupil John Opie, a 
 youth of fifteen. Thirty-two years later 
 Opie, the professor of painting to the Royal 
 Academy, delivered the knowledge and 
 experience of his life in a series of four 
 lectures, of which it is said that, with the 
 exception of those of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
 " there are no other lectures emanating from 
 the Royal Academy more original and just." 
 They deal with Design, Invention, Chiaro- 
 scuro, and Colouring. The point to notice
 
 Influence on Contemporaries 151 
 
 is that Opie in these lectures mentions 
 frequently Sir Joshua Reynolds ; he dilates 
 upon Rubens, Rembrandt and other names 
 of giants in art. But nowhere does he 
 mention Romney. By 1810, so far as we 
 can judge, Romney 's reputation had under- 
 gone a rapid decline. The sale at Christie's 
 in 1807 realised but very low prices. There 
 were no influential friends to boom his 
 pictures. The portrait of Lady Almeria 
 Carpenter was sold for a guinea and a half. 
 The tide turned afterwards, but it is 
 significant that this young contemporary 
 should not notice his great fellow artist. In 
 the Boydell Plates (two volumes in sepia) 
 at South Kensington, there are copies of 
 the pictures done for Boydell's Galleries by 
 Romney, Opie, Smirke, Stothard and 
 Wheatley. One suggests that in the work of 
 Opie and Smirke, but especially in that of 
 Opie, there are, in these plates, certain 
 peculiarities of nose and mouth which are 
 often very much in evidence and hint at the 
 art of Romney. The question arises whether 
 these artists were influenced by Romney or 
 Romney by either of them. Did these 
 artists all draw from one model, especially
 
 152 Romney 
 
 from Emma Hamilton ? Was there at that 
 period a sort of type, a growth of the years 
 in which it occurs, something without any 
 special reference to any individual painter ? 
 The peculiarities are to be traced slightly in 
 the works of Stothard, Westley, and West. 
 In Romney 's Prosper o and Miranda we have 
 the Emma Hamilton face, but with nose and 
 mouth less strongly marked and the face 
 rounder than in his Cassandra Raving, 
 a full-length figure of Emma Hamilton 
 draped and with the face uplifted. In this 
 picture the arms are somewhat too fleshy 
 in proportion to the figure. In his Infant 
 Shakespeare Attended by Nature and the 
 Passions one feels that the general aspect of 
 the picture does not closely approximate to 
 the bulk of Romney's work. But it is to 
 the long nose and strongly-curved mouth, 
 features decidedly in evidence in Romney's 
 pictures, and at least suggested in the works 
 of the other artists, that one specially draws 
 attention, and asks whether there was a 
 common model, or a common type, or a 
 common inspiration ? 
 
 We have referred earlier to a comparison 
 between a picture of Romney's and some of
 
 Influence on Contemporaries 153 
 
 Tilly Kettle's productions. In the National 
 Gallery there is a portrait of Warren 
 Hastings said to have been executed by Tilly 
 Kettle, and catalogued as such. The 
 National Gallery acquired this portrait in 
 1859, and then it was catalogued as a 
 Romney. Messrs. Ward & Roberts include 
 the portrait of Warren Hastings among 
 Romney 's works, and say that the portrait 
 described as being " painted in India by Tilly 
 Kettle, which is now in the National Portrait 
 Gallery, was catalogued as by Romney in 
 1859." Here then is one more portrait which 
 has led authorities to differ, and seems to 
 point to the influence of one artist upon the 
 style and execution of another. One 
 notices in passing that the portrait of Lord 
 Kenyan, attributed to Martin Archer Shee, 
 was partly Romney's work. The essential 
 part, at least, the head, was the work of 
 his hands.
 
 APPENDIX I. 
 
 PICTURES BY ROMNEY IN GALLERIES OPEN TO THE 
 PUBLIC AND IN PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS. 
 
 NATIONAL GALLERY. Approx. date 
 
 Mrs. Robert Trotter of Bush (2943) '7 8 9 
 
 The Beaumont Family (3400) 1776-8 
 
 Lady and Child (1667) 1782 
 
 Sketch of Lady Hamilton (1668) 
 Lady Hamilton (head only) 
 The Parson's Daughter (1058) 
 
 NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY. 
 
 Lady Hamilton (294) 
 
 Richard Cumberland (19) 1776 
 
 John Flaxman (101) 
 
 James Harris (185) 
 
 Lloyd, Lord Kenyon (469) . (First cata- 
 logued under Shee, who completed the 
 portrait, the majority of which is by 
 Romney.) 1792 
 
 George Romney (unfinished by himself) 
 (959) 
 
 John Smeaton (doubtful Romney ; 
 
 ? Rhodes) (80) 1779 
 
 Adam Walker and family (1106) 
 
 William Cowper 
 
 1. Crayon drawing (1423) 
 
 2. Painting (372) 
 
 Peter Romney (miniature) (1882) 
 Robert Raikes (1551) 
 
 TATE GALLERY. 
 
 Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante (312) 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Lindow (3196) 1770 
 
 Mrs. Mark Currie (1651) I78g 
 
 Lady Craven (1669) 1778 
 
 Jacob Morland (1906) 
 
 William Pitt the Younger (2280) 1783 
 
 155
 
 156 Romney 
 
 VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM. 
 
 "Serena" (? Honora Edgeworth, nte 
 
 Sneyd) before 1780 
 
 BIRMINGHAM (CITY ART GALLERY). 
 Lady Holte 1 78 1-3 
 
 CAMBRIDGE (CHRIST'S COLLEGE). 
 
 Archdeacon Paley 1789 
 
 (CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE). 
 
 William Colman, D.D. 1779 
 
 (EMMANUEL COLLEGE). 
 
 Rev. R. Farmer 1777 
 
 Samuel Parr, D.D. 1788 
 
 Earl of Westmorland 1782 
 
 (Fitz WILLIAM MUSEUM). 
 
 Portrait of a Young Man 
 
 (GONVILLE AND CAIUS COLLEGE). 
 
 Samuel Parr, D.D. (copy) 1788 
 (MAGDALENE COLLEGE). 
 
 Richard Cumberland 
 (ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE). 
 
 Sir Noah Thomas 1781 
 
 -(TRINITY COLLEGE). 
 
 Duke of Gloucester 1790 
 
 DULWICH COLLEGE. 
 
 Joseph Allen, M.D. 1778 
 
 ETON COLLEGE. 
 
 Lord Boston 1783 
 
 W. W. Grenville 1781 
 
 Charles Grey 1784 
 
 Mr. Herbert 
 
 Hon. William King 1788 
 
 Mr. Lane (replica] 
 
 Mr. Simpson 1789 
 
 William Tighe 1781 
 
 FISHMONGER'S HALL. 
 
 The Margrave of Anspach 1793 
 
 The Margravine of Anspach r 793
 
 Appetidix 157 
 
 GREENWICH HOSPITAL. 
 
 Adm. Hon. John Forbes 1778 
 
 Adm. Sir Charles Hardy 1 780 
 
 HARROW SCHOOL. 
 
 John Sayer 1770 
 
 HERTFORD HOUSE (WALLACE COLLECTION). 
 
 Mrs. Robinson as Perdita 1778 
 
 MANCHESTER (CITY ART GALLERY). 
 
 Hon. Thomas Cherbury Bligh 1782 
 (CHETHAM'S LIBRARY). 
 
 Robert Thyer 
 
 OXFORD (CHRIST CHURCH). 
 
 Dr. Cleaver 1796 
 
 W. W. Grenvillc (reputed Komney) 71781 
 
 Sir A. Macdonald 1 793 
 
 Duke of Portland 1 794 
 
 Edward Smallwell 1794 
 
 Lord Stormont 1783 
 
 (NEW COLLEGE). 
 
 Dr. John Oglander 1778 
 
 (TRINITY COLLEGE). 
 
 Dr. Samuel Johnson (reputed Romney) 
 
 (WADHAM COLLEGE). 
 
 James Harris (replica) 
 
 ST. LUKE'S HOSPITAL. 
 
 Mr. Prowting 1788
 
 APPENDIX II. 
 
 A LIST OF WORKS ON THE LIFE AND ART OF 
 GEORGE ROMNEY. 
 
 The following list of books and articles is in no way 
 comprehensive. It simply suggests certain typical 
 works to the attention of the student, who can 
 easily amplify the materials for research by a 
 reference to the Index and Subject Index at the 
 British Museum, and elsewhere. 
 
 George Romney (with plates). Lord Ronald 
 
 Charles Sutherland Gower. 1904 
 
 Romney : a bibliographical and critical essay, 
 with a Catalogue Raisonne of his Works. 
 Thomas Humphrey Ward and William 
 Roberts. 1904 
 
 George Romney (with 73 plates). Arthur 
 
 Benslcy Chamberlain. 1906 
 
 George Romney and his Art. Hilda Gamlin. 1894 
 
 The Cult of Old Paintings and the Romney 
 
 Case. R. D. Lloyd. 1917 
 
 The Life of George Romney. William Hayley. 1809 
 
 Memoirs of the Life and Works of George 
 
 Romney. Rev. John Romney, B.D. 1830 
 
 A Romney Folio. With 68 plates in photo- 
 gravure and an es>ay with descriptive notes. 
 Arthur Bensley Chamberlain. 1911 
 
 George Romney. Sir \Villiam Maxwell. 1902 
 
 The Masterpieces of Romney. (Sixty repro- 
 ductions). Gowan's Art Books No 36. 1910 
 
 A n Illustrated Catalogue of Engraved Portraits 
 and Fancy Subjects painted by G. Romney, 
 published between 1770 and 1830. H. P. 
 Home. 1891 
 
 The Engraved Works of Romney and Gains- 
 borough. Herbert Percy Home. 1891 
 
 158
 
 Appendix 159 
 
 Romney, Containing sixteen Examples in 
 
 Colour of the Master's Work. Randall 
 
 Davies. 1914 
 
 Stories of the English Artists from Vandyck to 
 
 Turner. Randall Davies. 1908 
 
 English Society of the Eighteenth Century in 
 
 Contemporary Art. Randall Davies. 1907 
 
 The Life and Works of Ozias Humphry, R.A. 
 
 G. C. Williamson. 1918 
 
 A Little Gallery of Romney. (Methuens.) 1903 
 
 George Romney. G. Paston. 1903 
 
 Romney's Art (Th-..- Nineteenth Century). 
 
 R. C. Witt. 1901 
 
 Article on Romney (The Temple Bar Magazine, 
 
 Vol. 60) 1880 
 
 Portrait of Mrs. Blair (The Century Magazine) 
 
 June, 1911 
 
 Romney. (Putnam's Monthly). August, 1907 
 
 The Romney Exhibition at the Grafton Gallery 
 
 (Magazine of Art). Lionel Cust. 1900 
 
 A Century of Artists. William Ernest Henley. 1889 
 Memoirs of Mr. George Romney. (The 
 
 European Magazine, Vol. 43). Richard 
 
 Cumberland. June, 1803 
 
 The reader is also referred to such works as these : 
 Art in Great Britain and Ireland, by Sir Walter 
 Armstrong; Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and 
 Engravers ; The Life of Romney in the Dictionary 
 of National Biography, etc. 
 
 Printed in Great Britain by MACKAYS LTD., Chatham.
 
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