140 



ROMNEY, GEORGE. 



ROMNEY, GEORGE. 



160 



from the schools. Through the influence of his friend Mr. Strickland, 

 he obtained considerable employment from the gentlemen of West- 

 moreland, in some of whose portraits he introduced dogs, painted 

 with great spirit and truth. Besides portraits he painted many fancy 

 pieces, twenty of which he exhibited in the town-hall of Kendal, and 

 disposed of afterwards by lottery, for which he issued eighty tickets 

 at half-a-guinea each. After exercising his talents for about five years 

 in the north, his ambition directed his views towards the capital ; and 

 in the spring of 1762, he set out alone for London, leaving his wife 

 and two young children in Kendal, who, according to the painter's 

 son, were to join him when he had established himself in the metro- 

 polis; but the sequel casts a shade over the moral character of 

 Roinney. He rose rapidly to fame and fortune, and, with Reynolds 

 and Gainsborough, divided the patronage of the great and the wealthy ; 

 but his young wife was never called to share the fortunes of her hus- 

 band ; he concealed his marriage from his friends, and only returned 

 to the neglected mother of his children when he was old and feeble, 

 and required a nurse to administer to his wants and bear with his 

 weaknesses. 



Romney commenced his metropolitan career by painting heads for 

 four guineas in the city. In 1763 he obtained a second prize of fifty 

 guineas from the Society of Arts for a picture of the ' Death of 

 Wolfe,' but, it is said through the influence of Reynolds, the decision 

 was revised, and reversed in favour of Mortimer, for his picture of 

 ' Edward the Confessor seizing the Treasures of his Mother.' Romney 

 received a present of twenty-five guineas. This circumstance is sup- 

 posed by some to have been the principal cause of the ill-feeling which 

 ever after subsisted between Romney and Reynolds. 



Romney seems to have met with considerable and early encourage- 

 ment. He soon moved from the city to the west end, and raised his 

 price for a head to five guineas. At this time he paid a short visit to 

 Paris, where he was much struck with the great Mary de' Medici 

 series of pictures by Rubens, in the Luxembourg. Upon his return 

 he painted the portrait of Sir Joseph Yates, one of the judges of the 

 court of King's Bench, a picture which procured him a valuable con- 

 nection amongst lawyers. Shortly afterwards he obtained a fifty- 

 guinea premium from the Society of Arts for a picture of the ' Death 

 of King Edmund.' In 1767, in consequence of his rapidly increasing 

 practice, he removed to Great Newport-street, within a few doors of 

 the former residence of Reynolds. Here he added greatly to his 

 reputation by a portrait of Sir George Warren and his Lady, with a 

 little girl caressing a bullfinch. He now not only ranked with the 

 first painters of fancy subjects, but he bid fair to rival the President 

 in portrait. 



Romney's intercourse with men of taste and learning was now such 

 as to make him feel the necessity of an acquaintance with the works 

 of art upon the Continent. He accordingly set out for Italy in 1773, 

 with a letter of introduction to the pope from that great patron of the 

 arts, the Duke of Richmond. In Rome he paid particular attention 

 to the works of Michel Angelo and RafFaelle; and during his stay there 

 produced one of his most beautiful pictures, the ' Wood Nymph,' 

 representing a naked female reposing upon the ground, with her back 

 towards the spectator. From Rome he went to Venice, where he 

 painted the portrait of Wortley Montagu in a Turkish dress. He 

 returned to London in the summer of 1775, greatly improved in 

 every respect by his continental tour. 



Shortly after his return to London, he took a house in Cavendish 

 Square, and, under the auspices of the Duke of Richmond, recom- 

 menced his career as a portrait-painter, charging 15 guineas for a head, 

 30 for a half-length, and 60 for a whole length ; the President's price 

 being at that time 35 guineas for a head. But Romney soon found it 

 necessary to raise his prices, for sitters of all ranks crowded to his 

 studio ; and, notwithstanding they were still comparatively low, in a 

 few years he realised an income of nearly four thousand a year by 

 portraits alone. He subsequently raised his prices considerably : in 

 1787 to 25 guineas ; in 1789, to 30 ; and in 1793, to 35 guineas for a 

 head, which continued to be his charge during the remainder of his 

 life, the other sizes being charged in proportion. 



Romuey was now the acknowledged rival of the President in 

 portrait. Lord Thurlow is reported to have said, "Reynolds and 

 Romney divide the town ; I am of the Romney faction." Notwith- 

 standing Romney's great employment in portraiture, he found abund- 

 ant leisure to ' lay in ' fancy pieces, many of which however were left 

 unfinished. The most remarkable of those of the earlier part of his 

 career were, ' The Tempest ; ' ' Tragedy and Comedy nursing Shak- 

 spere;' the 'Infant Shakspere attended by the Passions;' the 'Alope;' 

 ' Children in a Boat drifted out to Sea ; ' ' Shepherd Boy asleep, 

 watched by his Dog, at the approach of a Thunder-storm ; ' ' Nature 

 unveiling herself to Shakspere,' &c. Romney is said to have been the 

 originator of Boydell's 'Shakspere Gallery.' The Tempest and the 

 Infant Shakspere attended by the Passions were painted for that collec- 

 tion. He made sketches also for five other subjects, but they were 

 never executed ; the Banquet and the Cavern Scene in ' Macbeth ; ' 

 .Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page ; Bolingbroke and Margery Jourdain con- 

 juring up the Fiend ; and the Maid of Orleans. Romney was an enthu- 

 siastic admirer of the celebrated Lady Hamilton, then the beautiful 

 Emma Lyon. According to his son, he made no less than twenty-three 

 pictures from her, some of which however were never finished. She was 



painted in various characters, as Iphigenia, St. Cecilia, Sensibility, a 

 Bacchante, Alope, the Spinstress, Cassandra, Calypso, Magdalene, Joan 

 of Arc, and Pythian Priestess. 



Romney's ambition appears to have increased with his years, and 

 in his later days he devoted himself more ardently to fancy subjects 

 than ever. Milton and his Daughters, and Newton making Experi- 

 ments with the Prism, as a companion to it, were the most popular 

 of these later productions. He sent IQOl. to Flaxman, then studying 

 in Rome, to purchase casts from the antique for him, who sent him 

 "the cream of the finest things in Rome ;" the group of the Laocoon, 

 the Niobe, the Apollo Belvidere, the Apollo Sauroctonos, groups of 

 the Castor and Pollux, and Cupid and Psyche, the relief on the 

 Borghese vase, several busts, and the best fragments of legs and arms 

 that could be found. These splendid monuments of ancient genius 

 tended only still further to excite the emulation and ambition of 

 Romney; he conceived grand designs of painting 'the Seven Ages,' 

 'the Visions of Adam with the Angel,' 'the Flood, and the opening of 

 the Ark,' and many from Milton, some of Adam and Eve, and others 

 having Satan a-i their hero. 



This constant excitement seems to have been too much for the 

 painter's nerves, and his mind was gradually giving way under it. Hia 

 observations called forth by the melancholy fate of his friend Cowper 

 seem to have been almost foreboding of the similar fate that awaited 

 himself : " If there is a situation more deplorable than any other in 

 nature, it is the horrible decline of reason, and the derangement of 

 that power we have been blest with." The health of his faculties was 

 now rapidly declining, but the return of his friend Flaxman from 

 Rome, of whose talents he had a very high opinion, cheered him for a 

 season. He shortly however became possessed with an idea that his 

 house in Cavendish-square was not sufficiently spacious to admit of 

 the execution of the magnificent designs he had in contemplation, and 

 he accordingly had a house and gallery constructed at Hampstead, 

 upon his own plans and under his own direction. He left Cavendish- 

 square in 1797, after a residence there of twenty-one years, and repaired 

 to his new studio at Hampstead, but not to revel in the dreams of his 

 wild genius, for he was soon oppressed with a degree of nervous 

 dejection that deprived him of all energy. After one or two efforts 

 upon the canvass, he complained of a swimming in the head, and a 

 paralytic numbness in his right hand, and then renounced the pencil 

 for ever. 



In the summer of 1799 he was seized with a sudden impulse, and 

 started abruptly for the north, where, in Kendal, his amiable wife still 

 resided, surviving the cold neglect and long estrangement of her 

 husband, and in whom he found an attentive and affectionate nurse, 

 " who had never been irritated to an act of unkindness or an expression 

 of reproach" by thirty -seven years of absence and neglect, during 

 which long interval he had paid but two visits to the north. The 

 kind attentions of this exemplary woman awakened feelings of intense 

 gratitude in the heart of Romney, and he once again enjoyed real 

 happiness, to which in the long years of his prosperity he had been a 

 total stranger. He gave orders for the sale of his property at Hamp- 

 stead, and purchased a house at Kendal, where he had resolved to 

 remain. But this bright period was of short duration, for upon the 

 return of his brother, Colonel Romney, from India, which was little 

 more than a year after his arrival at Kendal, he suddenly fell into a 

 state of utter imbecility, and he lingered on for nearly two years, 

 unconscious of existence, until the loth of November 1802, when he 

 died, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. He was buried at Dalton, the 

 place of his birth. 



Romney attained to considerable eminence both in history and 

 portrait. According to Flaxman a warm friend and admirer of 

 Romney he surpassed all British painters in poetic dignity of concep- 

 tion ; and in portrait he was the acknowledged rival of Sir Joshua 

 Reynolds. His productions in poetic and historic art, finished and 

 unfinished, are extraordinarily numerous, comprising every variety of 

 subject from the illustration of the most simple historical fact to the 

 endeavour to embody the wildest fictions of the poets. Some of these 

 designs were presented in 1817 by the painter's son to the University 

 of Cambridge, to be deposited in the Fitzwilliam Museum ; and the 

 Cartoons, so much admired by Flaxman, were by the same gentleman 

 presented in 1823 to the Royal Institution of Liverpool. They consist 

 of eight from the story of Cupid and Psyche, two from that of Orpheus 

 and Eurydice, and one from each of the following subjects: 'Prome- 

 theus chained,' 'Descent of Odin,' 'Medea,' 'Birth of Shakspere,' 

 ' Infant Shakspere,' ' Death of Cordelia,' ' Ghost of Darius,' and 

 'Atossa's Dream.' 



The following examples will serve to show how extensively Romney 

 was patronised in portrait : the Duke of Richmond, the Duke of 

 Portland, the Duke of Grafton, Lord Chancellor Thurlow, Warren 

 Hastings, Cowper, Earl of Chatham, William Pitt, Gibbon, David 

 Hartley, Sir Hyde Parker, Lord Melville, Lord Ellenborough, the 

 Archbishops of Canterbury, York, and Dublin, Dr. Parr, Dr. Paley, 

 John Wesley, Thomas Paine, Mrs. Fitzherbert, Mrs. Jordan, and 

 Flaxman modelling the bust of Hayley. 



Romney was not a member of the Royal Academy, and he never 

 sent any of his works to its exhibitions. He has had several biogra- 

 phers : Cumberland, the dramatist, wrote a short account of him ; his 

 friend Hayley, the poet, published an elaborate life, for which Flaxman 



