Produced by Al Haines
[Illustration: cover art]
MASTERPIECES
IN COLOUR
EDITED BY
T. LEMAN HARE
ROMNEY
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PLATE I.--THE HORSLEY CHILDREN. From the picture in the possession of
Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons. (Frontispiece)
Few painters have rivalled Romney in expressing the simplicity and
naivete of children. These portraits of Master George and Miss
Charlotte Horsley are excellent examples of his mastery of an artless
pose, and of the reticence of his colour. How delightfully the flowers
tell against the white dresses.
[Illustration: PLATE I.--THE HORSLEY CHILDREN.]
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ROMNEY
BY C. LEWIS HIND
ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR
[Illustration: title page art]
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.
1907
CONTENTS
Chap.
I. Three Periods of Romney's Life
II. Romney, Reynolds, and Others
III. His Vicissitudes of Fame
IV. His Portraits in Public Galleries
V. His Portraits in Private Collections
VI. Emma, and The End
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate
I. The Horsley Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece
From the picture in the possession of
Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons
II. Sketch Portrait of Lady Hamilton
From the picture in the National Gallery
III. Mrs. Mark Currie
From the picture in the National Gallery
IV. The Parson's Daughter: a Portrait
From the picture in the National Gallery
V. Lady with a Child
From the picture in the National Gallery
VI. Mrs. Robinson--"Perdita"
From the picture in the Wallace Collection
VII. Miss Benedetta Ramus
From the picture in the possession of the
Hon. W. F. D. Smith
VIII. Miss Ramus
From the picture in the possession of the
Hon. W. F. D. Smith
[Illustration: Romney]
CHAPTER I
THREE PERIODS OF ROMNEY'S LIFE
High over the western boundary of Cavendish Square rose a tripod wooden
scaffolding, supporting a gigantic crane cutting the arch of the sky;
on windy days the smoke from the engine was blown upwards into space.
Below, twentieth-century mansions were growing on the site of old
Harcourt House, for Cavendish Square, like the rest of London, was
suffering an architectural change into something strange and new.
Some of the eighteenth-century houses remain, and as I sought No. 32,
in the early summer of 1907, I wondered if this dwelling of memories
had escaped the builder. Abundant memories! Into that house, through
the later years of the eighteenth century, passed the flower of English
loveliness, breeding, valour, brains, wit and frailty. For this was
Romney's house, with the large painting-room at the back, which he,
greatly daring, rented in 1775, to the satisfaction of the landlord,
whose property had been untenanted since the death of Francis Cotes,
R.A., five years before. Soon the great Sir Joshua showed signs of
Olympian jealousy at the success of the raw man from the North,
reserved, silent, moody, whose acquaintance with the _beau monde_ did
not go beyond his studio door; who worked by night on designs for
"great or heroic art," and who had a genius for fixing the fleeting
loveliness of a woman's face so simply and fragrantly that we liken a
fine Romney to a rosebud arranged in a pattern of artless leaves.
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PLATE II.--SKETCH PORTRAIT OF LADY HAMILTON.
(From the picture in the National Gallery)
Her rich brown hair falls in tempestuous disorder over a pillow; the
mouth is open; the eyes are as near to tragedy as the volatile Emma
could go. This sketch (circular, 1 ft. 6 in.) was presented to the
National Gallery in 1898.
[Illustration: PLATE II.--SKETCH PORTRAIT OF LADY HAMILTON.]
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Sir Joshua, at work in Leicester Square, realised that the stream of
fashion flowing to his studio had been diverted. He did not refer to
Romney by name! He merely called him "the man in Cavendish Square,"
and be sure that some candid friend repeated to him Thurlow's public
declaration: "The town is divided between Reynolds and Romney; I belong
to the Romney faction."
If you think that plain-speech Thurlow exaggerated, glance at the
verbatim transcript of Romney's Diaries, giving the names and
appointments of his sitters, printed in the monumental work by Mr.
Humphry Ward and Mr. W. Roberts. In less than twenty years over nine
thousand sittings in the house in Cavendish Square are recorded.
If the stones of Cavendish Square had language! To No. 32 came Warren
Hastings, Burke, Thurlow, Garrick, John Wesley, lords and ladies
innumerable, the two lovely Ramus girls, the beautiful Mrs. Lee Acton,
Mrs. Mark Currie, Mrs. "Perdita" Robinson, and the adorable Miss
Vernon. Other men seek elation in wine, or spring, in Mozart or Grieg;
Romney found it in the flash of a new face, "lit with the shock of
eager eyes." Thither came the pretty Gower, Clavering, Warwick, and
Horsley children, and one day in 1782 that "divine lady" Emma, when
Romney was forty-eight. In she floated, laughter in her eyes, joy on
her lips, sunshine in her presence--shadowed by her cavalier, Charles
Greville, whose emotions were as precisely under control as running
motor to a chauffeur. Thus joy entered into his life, and joy left
him, when, nine years later, he painted Emma for the last time after
her marriage to Sir William Hamilton. The syren having departed he was
soon to be on his way--a broken man, still ambitious but
ineffectual--to the arms of deserted Griselda, patiently awaiting her
faithless husband in Kendal.
Having reached this point in my meditations, I came abreast of No. 32,
and found a brand-new, pleasing house, without tablet or bust. Sir
Joshua marched conquering to the goal: Romney fell before the last lap.
I paced the square and thought of his life that has given immortality
to so many. The eighteenth century is vocal on the canvases of her
great painters. The other day I saw the two Ramus girls smiling from a
wall in a house by Henley-on-Thames, and they seemed more alive than
the goggled, huddled women that had just flashed along the highroad in
a motor car. And as I mused by the trees in Cavendish Square,
dominated by that vast crane--the sign-mark of new London--cutting the
sky, I saw clearly the three periods of Romney's life symbolised by a
_Horse_, a _House_, and the words _Home Again_.
THE HORSE
It is March 14, 1762. George Romney, aged twenty-eight, mounts his nag
at Kendal and rides forth, with fifty pounds in his saddle-bags, to
seek fame and fortune as a painter in London. Nothing matters but his
career. Doubtless he is sure--or as sure as an emotional,
impressionable man, taking his colour from his surroundings, but
conscious of great powers, can be--that when his pockets are full of
guineas, he will send for Mary and the children; but that is all vague.
He knows, if he does not confess it to himself, that he has outgrown
the pretty, patient creature he married seven years before, after she
had nursed him through fever in his Kendal lodgings. As he rides he
recalls his early days in the farmhouse at Beckside: his versatile
father--farmer, cabinet-maker, draughtsman, and a dozen other things;
his affection for Williamson, watchmaker and musician; the influence of
Christopher Steele--"itinerant dauber"; his stay in York, where he saw
Sterne; the first picture he painted--a hand holding a letter for the
post-office at Kendal; the portraits he produced at two guineas for a
head and six guineas for a whole length; then more success, and finally
that lottery of his unsold works at the Kendal Town Hall, eighty-two
tickets at half-a-guinea each. The proceeds, added to his savings,
made him master of a hundred guineas. Half went to Mary; and here he
is, with the other fifty in his saddle-bags, a free man, jogging
towards London. Somehow he will find the intricate key to fame. But
first he must seek a lodging. He scans bewildering London, puts up at
the Castle Inn, and a fortnight later moves to Dove Court, near the
Poultry end of Cheapside.
THE HOUSE
It is March 27, 1776--fourteen years have passed. Romney is in his
Cavendish Square house waiting for the first sitter recorded in his
Diaries--"Lord Parker at 9 o'clock." Two more are to follow that day,
"Miss Vernon at half-past 10," and "Lady Betty Compton at 1/4 to 2."
Seven more are booked for the three following days, and on Sunday he
expects "At two a lady." He is well pleased. Fame is at his elbow.
Fourteen busy years have glided by since his nag first clattered on the
Cheapside cobbles. He has painted many pictures, always believing that
"heroic art" is his forte, and portraits merely a means of living, and
he has refused to exhibit at the Royal Academy, holding that public
competition is bad for a man with "aspen nerves, shy, private,
studious, and contemplative." In those fourteen years the _gauche_
north countryman has seen something of the world. He has visited
Paris, and he has made a tour lasting two years and three months
through Italy, without which the education of an eighteenth-century
painter was considered incomplete. Troubles he has had, of course.
There was that cruel affair of the Society of Arts' competition, in
which his picture of "The Death of Wolfe" won the prize; but the award
of fifty guineas was, for some mysterious reason, withdrawn, and he had
to be content with a consolation gift. Romney believes that Reynolds
had a hand in it; but that is hard to credit. Italy and success and
the Cavendish Square venture have blotted out that early
disappointment. Taking Francis Cotes' large house was a bold step, and
it had been complicated, at the critical moment, by an offer from Lord
Warwick to visit Warwick Castle and paint a companion to the "very
respectable portraits, chiefly by Vandyke, collected by the Earl."
Romney refused that tempting offer (he painted the family group later),
determined to let nothing delay the Cavendish Square plunge. How well
it has turned out! Like Sir Joshua he has begun a Diary of his
sitters. The hands of the clock point to nine. It is time Lord Parker
arrived. And at half-past ten, joy! he will be shyly welcoming the
beautiful Miss Vernon. The image of Mary, in the far-away north, is
very faint.
HOME AGAIN
More than twenty years have passed. The Cavendish Square house is let
to Sir Martin Archer Shee: Romney has given up portrait painting, and
in the Hampstead studio purposes to devote himself to heroic art and
win immortality with his Miltonic subjects. But his health grows
worse. The game is up. Oppressed, conscious of numbness in his hand
and a swimming in his head, chagrined at the muddled failure of his
building experiments at Holly Bush Hill, Hampstead--that "whimsical
structure covering half the garden,"--where some of his pictures were
destroyed by weather and others stolen, he longs only for peace and
escape from himself. Yet how triumphant has been the course of those
twenty years in Cavendish Square. Never throwing off the mask of the
recluse, he has made friends after his own kind; he has moved in the
Eartham set which revolved round the orb of the preposterous Hayley.
There he met Cowper, and that "elegant female," Miss Seward, the "Swan
of Lichfield," who would address him as "beloved and honoured Titiano,"
or as Raphael, while he would greet her as Sappho; Flaxman, too, he has
known, who bought for him in Italy ten large cases of casts--the
Laoecoon, the Apollo Belvedere, and so on. These the painter would
exhibit to his select friends and pupils in his studio at night, a
powerful lamp shining down upon the Laoecoon. Then was Romney happy.
Away from the distraction of the "new face lit with the shock of eager
eyes," he could bemuse himself with the contortions of the Laoecoon, and
believe that he was surrounded by the creations of "great art."
But the game is now up. Sorely hurt in the battle, seeing nothing
clearly, little dreaming how famous his portraits--"that cursed
drudgery"--would make him in the twentieth century, he leaves London
and makes his way back to Mary. She nurses him, and buries him after
two years of "complete imbecility."
* * * * *
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PLATE III.--MRS. MARK CURRIE.
(From the picture in the National Gallery)
A typical and charming Romney. Miss Elizabeth Close married Mr. Mark
Currie on January 18, 1789, and sat to Romney for the first time on the
7th of May in the same year. The painter received sixty guineas for
this portrait.
[Illustration: PLATE III.--MRS. MARK CURRIE.]
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The sun is shining cheerfully in Cavendish Square, and Romney's
troubles have been long quieted, forgotten in the pleasure his work
gives us. No! I do not feel any sadness in recalling his life. Death
pays all debts.
No. 32 looks very spick and span in the bright sunshine, and as I gaze
at it I perceive above the tall ground-floor windows two heads of
cherubs in stone, just like Sir Joshua's Heads of Angels in the
National Gallery. Is it intentional, I wonder? Did the architect of
this new house wish subtly to suggest that he, like Lord Thurlow,
belonged to the Sir Joshua faction?
Maybe. I don't know, but I shall never pass the house without thinking
so. Poor Romney! He hated irony and wit--and irony in stone is more
enduring than irony in words or paint.