VICISSITUDES OF FAME
To-day--one hundred and five years after his death--no millionaire's
gallery is complete without a Romney, and the desire to possess a fine
example grows fiercer yearly.
Doubtless, the purchasers at public auction in 1896 of the "Ladies
Caroline and Elizabeth Spencer," in white and red dresses, for L10,500,
and, in 1902, of Miss Sarah Rodbard fondling a Skye terrier curled up
upon a stone pedestal, for the same price, were well content with their
bargains. Romney received L84 apiece for these pictures. His "Lady
Hamilton as Nature," which was bought by Mr. Fawkes of Farnley,
Turner's friend, for 50 guineas in 1816 was resold after the Grafton
Exhibition for, it is said, 20,000 guineas. The picture is now in
Paris.
The witchery of his portraits of dainty dolls, the sweet composure of
his young matrons, the charm of his children, the delicacy of his
presentments of men, such as the "Wesley" and the "Warren Hastings,"
captivate the unlearned as well as connoisseurs. The appeal of his
gift for expressing momentary loveliness is instantaneous. He was a
poet in paint to a far greater degree than the so-called poets of the
Eartham set were in words. No problem is offered; the freshness of the
flower-like faces is stated simply and without hint of cleverness. The
reticent colour lingers on sash or ribbon, and beneath the powdered
fair hair the rose and cream tints of these pretty mondaines bloom like
the petals of carnations against the light. So virginal are the
typical Romney ladies, that it is almost a shock to read that some of
the portraits were never paid for, because the bright creatures had
been passed on from the protector who gave the commission for the
portrait. John Romney found a neat phrase when he said that his father
"could impart to his female figures that indescribable something--that
_je ne sais quoi_--which captivates the spectator without his being
able to account for it."
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PLATE V.--LADY WITH A CHILD.
(From the picture in the National Gallery)
The dark blue eyes of the child gaze out upon the world in reposeful
wonder. The pose is delightfully natural. Romney's genius for design
never failed him when his subject was a girl, a mother and child, or a
group of children at play.
[Illustration: PLATE V.--LADY WITH A CHILD.]
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Strange it is that until the middle of the nineteenth century, when the
Romney revival began, fostered by the "Old Masters' Exhibitions" and
auction sales, his fame had suffered an almost total eclipse. His
portraits were hidden in private collections, the National Gallery set
had not been acquired, and nobody cared about his heroic and historical
cartoons and studies, at Cambridge and elsewhere.
The eclipse of the fame of Romney is no doubt partly due to the fact
that he never exhibited at the Royal Academy, which in those days meant
that "outsiders," so far as the public was concerned, were truly in
outer darkness. When Romney retired from contact with the fashionable
world, with which he never associated himself except as a painter; when
he forsook his disastrous building experiments at Hampstead, for the
living death (of his later years) at Kendal, he passed out of public
life. His portraits ceased to be a topic. There were no weekly art
columns in newspapers to fan the embers of his fame; the National
Gallery was not founded, and the age of illustrated essays on private
collections had not dawned.
The pages of the Diaries record, as I have already said, about nine
thousand sittings in less than twenty years--a colossal labour; but
some of the portraits were never finished, others have been lost or
stolen. He kept no Diary until he had settled in Cavendish Square in
1775, after his journey to Italy. Before that period Romney had
painted hundreds of pictures of which but scanty records remain. A few
examples may still be found in the houses of the descendants of the
original owners around Kendal.
Forty-five portraits of Lady Hamilton are recorded in Messrs. Ward and
Roberts' _Catalogue Raisonne_, sixteen illustrations of Shakespeare,
two of Milton, and over fifty miscellaneous and Fancy subjects. In the
Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge are a number of Pictorial Designs and
studies presented by the Rev. George Romney in 1817, and at the
Liverpool Royal Institution are eighteen cartoons, presented in 1823.
It would be unjust to call these historical and heroic subjects a
monument of misdirected effort; but if Romney's claim to fame rested
upon them, he would be of less account even than West and Fuseli.
His ardour was indefatigable, but it often spent itself when the
novelty of beginning a sketch or portrait had worn off. In reading,
too, his quick imagination soon flagged. At the end of one act, even
of one scene, of Shakespeare's, he was ready to begin his picture.
"The more he painted," says Hayley, "the greater was his flow of
spirits." A friend surprised him one night working at an "Accusation
of Susannah by the two Elders" by lamplight. It was never finished.
Late in life he conceived a Gargantuan scheme of founding a Milton
Gallery which should rival Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery.
The most attractive of his fanciful subjects is "Shakespeare nursed by
Tragedy and Comedy," perhaps because Lady Hamilton was the model for
Comedy (not in person; she was in Naples at the time), and Romney's
brush was always inspired when he painted her adorable face.
Shakespeare--a robust, nude babe--sits on a cradle in the landscape
holding a flageolet, to the accompaniment of endearments from the
pretty Tragedy and Comedy ladies. The least attractive, indeed the
silliest, is the "Shipwreck," an early work engraved in Hayley's
_Life_. A huddle of exaggeration and emphasis, it has all the vices of
the melodramatic heroic pictures of the period.
Romney had some talent as a musician, and as a boy he debated whether
he should be a musician or a painter. Cumberland records that once he
heard the painter perform on his own home-made violin in a room hung
with his own pictures--"a singular coincidence of arts in the person of
one man."
Reviewing his life, I seem to see him drawing, like Paganini on a
memorable occasion, exquisite strains from one string only--Romney of
the one string--a fantasia on the beauty of fair and fragile women,
pretty and graceful children, and delicate-visaged men, the sweetest
sounds coming when he extemporised in praise of Emma, the "divine lady"
who came into his life when he was forty-eight, and who renewed his
youth.