George Romney

(click to enlarge)
George Romney, "Self Portrait," oil painting, 1782; in the National Portrait Gallery, … (credit: Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)

(born Dec. 15, 1734, Dalton-in-Furness, Lancashire, Eng. — died Nov. 15, 1802, Kendal, Westmorland) British portrait painter. Son of a Lancashire cabinetmaker, he began his career by touring the northern counties, painting portraits for a few guineas each. In 1762 he established himself as a portraitist in London and quickly won favour among society patrons. His success depended on the flattery of his likenesses; he avoided any suggestion of the sitter's character or sensibilities. Infatuated with Emma Hart (later Lady Hamilton) c. 1781 – 82, he went on to paint more than 50 images of her. Line, rather than colour, dominates his work, and the flowing rhythms and easy poses of Roman Classical sculpture underlie the smooth patterns of his compositions.

For more information on George Romney, visit Britannica.com.

George Romney (1734-1802) was one of the most sought-after portrait painters in England. His portrait style is free, swift, and bold.

The son of a cabinetmaker, George Romney was born in Dalton, Lancashire. He was apprenticed in 1755 to Christopher Steele, a provincial portrait painter, but was largely self-taught. Romney's ambition was to become a history painter. In 1762 he moved to London, where he studied the Duke of Richmond's collection of casts of antique sculpture and established himself as a portraitist. He went to Italy in 1773, and after his return in 1775 he became the favorite painter of high society.

Morbidly sensitive and retiring, Romney kept aloof from the social world of his sitters and from the Royal Academy. By 1782 he was under the spell of Emma Hart, later Lady Hamilton and the mistress of Nelson, who sat for him as Circe, a Bacchante, Cassandra, the Pythian Priestess, Joan of Arc, St. Cecilia, Mary Magdalene, and other impersonations he suggested. In the 1780s he executed a number of Eton leaving portraits, which established him as the supreme interpreter of aristocratic adolescence in his age.

For much of his life in London, Romney was under the wing of the poet William Hayley, who encouraged him in the choice of subjects from Milton and Shakespeare as well as the Bible and Greek tragedy. Romney's history paintings are today chiefly known from engravings, like the dramatic Tempest (1787-1790) commissioned for John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery. A large number of drawings for these projects survive.

Romney had married early in life an uneducated woman whom he did not bring to London but to whom he returned when his health finally gave way. Ill health and the facility with which he converted his early realistic style into a fashionable sketchlike formula for idealizing his sitters probably account for an unevenness of execution that has partially justified his critics.

Unlike Joshua Reynolds, Romney did not enter into the character of his sitters, unless they possessed nervous traits like his own, for example, the moving portrait William Cowper. But he was psychologically involved with the generalized charms of youth, beauty, and breeding that he admired in his aristocratic sitters, and by combining a neoclassic purity of line with free but masterly brushwork he achieved a number of incomparable images which transcend the realism of portraiture. This is exemplified in Mrs. Lee Acton (1791); with a faraway gaze which borders on the apprehensive, her fingers nervously clasped, she strays through a formless landscape menaced by storm clouds. In such paintings Romney is the "man of feeling" celebrated in Henry Mackenzie's novel (1771) with that title, just as the best of his sketches earn him an honorable place in the neoclassic avant-garde headed by William Blake and Henry Fuseli. Romney died in Kendal, Westmorland.

Further Reading

The best biography of Romney is still Arthur B. Chamberlain, George Romney (1910), richly documented from the memoirs of the time. For one of the rare appreciations of Romney's history paintings see W. Moelwyn Merchant, Shakespeare and the Artist (1959).

Romney, George (1734-1802). Painter, mainly of portraits. He was born in Lancashire and worked in the north of England until 1762, when he left his wife and children to go to London. About 1781 he became infatuated with Emma Hamilton and is probably best known for his many portraits of her. Romney rarely exhibited and never at the Royal Academy. In his later years he became insane and returned to Lancashire to die.

For other persons of the same name, see George Romney.

Self-portrait, by George Romney (Musée du Louvre).

George Romney (26 December 1734 – 15 November 1802)^[1] was a noted English portrait painter.

Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Work 3 Public collections of works 4 Gallery 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

Early life and education

George Romney was born in Beckside in Dalton-in-Furness, Lancashire (now part of Cumbria) and after attending school at Dendron at age eleven was apprenticed to his father as a cabinet-maker. In 1755, he went to Kendal to learn painting from the Cumberland artist, Christopher Steele.

Work

By 1757, Romney was becoming well-known as a portraitist. In 1762, married and with two children, he went to London, where the painting, The Death of General Wolfe won a prize from the Royal Society of Arts. Romney soon had a thriving portrait business in Long Acre. Much of his work features local aristocrats, ranging from wealthy gentlemen and military officers to ladies, children, and entire families. Most of his paintings feature a dark background that contrasts well with the subject of the painting and helps to center the viewer's attention on them.

Despite his great success George Romney was never invited to join the Royal Academy nor did he ever apply to join. While there has been much speculation about his relationship with the Academy, there is no doubt that he normally remained aloof maintaining that a good artist should succeed without being a member. His own career supported this belief, and it was only towards the end of his life that he expressed the slightest regret for his views^[2]

Portrait of Miss Juliana Willoughby, 1781-83 (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC)

Emma Hamilton as a bacchante by George Romney, 1785

In 1773 he travelled to Italy with fellow artist Ozias Humphrey to study art in Rome and Parma, returning to London in 1775 to resume business, this time in Cavendish Square (in a house formerly owned by noted portraitist Francis Cotes). In 1782, he met Emma Hamilton (then called Emma Hart) who became his muse. He painted over 60 portraits of her in various poses, sometimes playing the part of historical or mythological figures.[1] He also painted many other contemporaries, including fellow artist Mary Moser. After an absence of almost forty years, he returned to his family in Kendal in the summer of 1799. He was greeted by his loyal, devoted and unquestioning wife. Romney is buried in the churchyard of St. Mary's Parish Church, Dalton-in-Furness

George Romney is a kinsman of Mitt Romney, U.S politician.^{[3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]}

Public collections of works

Abbot Hall Art Gallery (Kendal, UK), the Ackland Art Museum (University of North Carolina), the Art Gallery of the University of Rochester (New York), the Art Institute of Chicago, the Ashmolean Museum (University of Oxford), the Beaverbrook Art Gallery (New Brunswick), the Blanton Museum of Art (University of Texas, Austin), Brigham Young University Museum of Art (Utah), the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh), the Courtauld Institute of Art (London), the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery (Ireland), the Detroit Institute of Arts, Dulwich Picture Gallery (London), Dunedin Public Art Gallery (Dunedin), Falmouth Art Gallery (England), the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Fitzwilliam Museum (University of Cambridge), Dalton Castle (England), the Robert Hull Fleming Museum (University of Vermont)^[1], the Frick Collection (New York City), the Getty Museum (Los Angeles), Harvard University Art Museums, the Hermitage Museum, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Huntington Library (California), the Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth, Texas), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Louvre, Manchester City Art Gallery (England), Musée des beaux-arts (Pau, France), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Texas), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Galleries of Scotland, the National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), the National Gallery of Victoria (Australia), the National Gallery of Canada, the National Maritime Museum (London, England), the National Museums and Galleries of Wales, the National Museums Liverpool (England), the National Portrait Gallery, London, the New Art Gallery (Walsall, England), the Norton Simon Museum (Pasadena, California), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Tate Gallery and the Wallace Collection (London).

Gallery

Self-portrait by George Romney, 1784, National Portrait Gallery, London

See also

• English school of painting

Leeds Castle ( Maidstone Kent UK)

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "Miss Anna Seward". University of Vermont. http://www.uvm.edu/~fleming/index.php?category=collection&page=slide&id=1953.9. Retrieved 2008-07-14. 
2. ^ Cross, David A. A Striking Likeness: The Life of George Romney. Ashgate, 2000. 288 pp. ISBN 1-84014-671-0
3. ^ AF Pedigree View Page
4. ^ AF Pedigree View Page
5. ^ AF Pedigree View Page
6. ^ Family Group Record - Ancestral File
7. ^ Individual Record
8. ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=2VT3aCo2j-gC&pg=PA229&lpg=PA229&dq=He+was+the+third+of+the+eleven+children+of+John+Romney+and+Anne+Simpson&source=web&ots=rrw7rF2276&sig=pqJvteRPuy7IL0_BKso4uN2pwn0

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: George Romney

• George Romney exhibition
• The Romney Society: British art's forgotten genius
• Gallery of Romney's Art

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