neglected. Hidden in private houses, the public never saw it;
his biographies did not interest people; he had left no group of
influential friends to hand down his memory. There was no such
machinery of celebrity in his case as had existed so abundantly in
Sir Joshua’s who lived not only by his pictures but by a multitude of
lovely engravings and by the written and spoken word of colleagues,
pupils, and friends. So Romney’s fame may almost be said to have
died away during the dark ages between 1820 and 1850; and Christie’s
Catalogues show that in those days he was ignored by collectors and
by galleries, such as then existed. In the general revival of æsthetic
intelligence which began about the middle of the century--a revival
of which the Pre-Raphaelite movement, the eloquence of Ruskin, and
the growth of a new class of wealthy amateurs were so many symptoms
and conditions--Romney began to emerge once more. Never was there an
artist who lived more wholly in his art. ‘In his painting-room,’ said
his pupil, Robinson, ‘he seemed to have the highest enjoyment of life,
and the more he painted the greater flow of spirits he acquired.’ It is
true that, by one of the ironies of history, it was not primarily in
portrait-painting that he was interested, but in those larger schemes
and subjects to which, according to the classification of his time, he
gave a higher place.”[35]
THE HON. MRS. DAVENPORT.
_George Romney
(1734–1802)._
_Collection of the
Hon. Andrew W. Mellon._
The _Hon. Mrs. Davenport_ (Charlotte Sneyd) is another of Romney’s
superlative creations. She is the personification of a gentle English
beauty, who might well have sat for the portrait of Tennyson’s “Queen
of the Rosebud Garden of Girls” in _Maud_.
Mrs. Davenport, dressed in perfect taste, is posed against a lovely
landscape background. Her gown is a delicate, yet glowing pink, and her
cape is white velvet trimmed with white fur. She also wears a white
scarf with brown ribbon and a white felt hat trimmed with brown and
white ribbons. Her powdered hair is arranged in soft ringlets and a
black velvet band around her neck affords a note of contrast to the
general lightness of the color of the costume. A fashionable muff adds
a _chic_ touch. The face is remarkably sweet and intelligent, as well
as beautiful, and the whole impression given by the portrait is of a
charming, gentle, gracious, and lovable personality.
Charlotte Sneyd, born in 1756, was the daughter of Mr. Ralph Sneyd
of _Keele Hall_, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, descended from
an ancient family of Chester, one of whom had been knighted on the
battlefield of Pinkie in 1547. Her mother was the daughter of Sir W.
W. Bugot, fifth Baronet of Blithefield, and the grand-daughter of the
first Earl of Dartmouth.
[Illustration:
_Collection of the Hon. Andrew W. Mellon_
THE HON. MRS. DAVENPORT
--_George Romney_]
Charlotte Sneyd was married in 1777 to Mr. Davies Davenport, High
Sheriff of Cheshire in 1783, and M. P. from 1806 to 1830. His seats
were Capesthorne, Crewe, and Calvely, Nantwich. Their youngest son took
the extra surname of Bromley and owned _Baginton Hall_, Coventry.
The Hon. Mrs. Davenport died in 1829. She was a cousin of Honora
Sneyd, whose name has been associated with that series of portraits by
Romney known as the “Serena” portraits. Honora was also famous for her
engagement to the talented, charming, and ill-fated Major John André.
The picture, painted in oils on canvas (30 × 25 inches), came from the
Collection of Brigadier-General Sir William Bromley-Davenport, K. C.
B., Lord-Lieutenant of the County of Chester, _Capesthorne Hall_,
Cheshire, England.
LADY DERBY.
_George Romney
(1734–1802)._
_Collection of
Mr. Jules S. Bache._
Of _Elizabeth, Countess of Derby_, Romney made one of his most
beautiful portraits and one of the most beautiful portraits, moreover,
of that great portrait period in which Romney worked. Everything about
it is lovely. There is no color in the picture except Lady Derby’s
golden hair and the green and brown tones of the distant landscape and
of the tree behind her. The dress, a thin white India mull of exquisite
fineness and transparency, is draped over a white brocade skirt, making
a costume which is the quintessence of purity and lightness; and Romney
has treated the white so perfectly that the picture seems to emit a
celestial radiance. Lady Derby has the fresh English complexion of rose
and white, and her golden hair is like sunshine and amber. The pose
is so easy and natural that we may safely guess it was a characteristic
one. Lady Derby seems unconscious of her charm; but she was certainly
too beautiful not to know it.
Elizabeth, Countess of Derby, was the only daughter of James, sixth
Duke of Hamilton and the famous Irish beauty, Elizabeth Gunning, who,
with her sister, Maria, took London by storm when they removed there in
1751 from Dublin. The career of the Gunning sisters was extraordinary,
for they had no money; but their handsome faces, fine figures, stylish
dressing, and charming manners, soon brought them into notoriety.
Crowds surged around them whenever they appeared: in the streets, in
Hyde Park, at Ranelagh, at Vauxhall, at routs, at assemblies, or at the
theatre. Horace Walpole said “it was extraordinary that two sisters
should be so beautiful.” Maria Gunning married in 1752 the Earl of
Coventry and also in the same year Elizabeth married surreptitiously
James, sixth Duke of Hamilton “using the ring of the bed-curtain for
her wedding ring.” On his death, six years later, she married John,
fifth Duke of Argyll. Elizabeth, now Duchess of Argyll, was still
as beautiful as ever and people ran after her as usual whenever she
appeared in public. “One Sunday evening in June, 1759,” so Horace
Walpole notes, “she was mobbed in Hyde Park. The King ordered that to
prevent this for the future, she should have a guard; and on the next
Sunday she made herself ridiculous by walking in the Park from eight
to ten P. M. with two sergeants of the Guards in front with
their halberds and twelve soldiers following her.” Elizabeth, Countess
of Derby, with such a beautiful mother, had, therefore, the right to
be a beauty. On June 12, 1774, “Lady Betty Hamilton” was married to
Edward Smith Stanley, afterwards twelfth Earl of Derby, known as the
“Cock-fighting Earl.” She soon tired of him and ran away with the Duke
of Dorset, who had been working on the Derby estate for some time in
the guise of a gardener in order to be near the beautiful Elizabeth
and to perfect their plans for elopement. Who can look upon Romney’s
portrait and blame him? Lord Derby married in 1797 the celebrated
actress Miss Farren (see page 420). Elizabeth Hamilton died in 1797,
aged forty-four.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Jules S. Bache_
LADY DERBY
--_George Romney_]
This portrait, oils on canvas (49½ × 39 inches), was painted in
1776–1778, after twelve sittings: Nov. 27, 1776; Jan. 31, Feb. 11, 14,
21, and March 19, 1777; Feb. 13, March 2, 9, 14, 23 and May 4, 1778. A
mezzotint was made by John Dean in 1780.
After having been for many years in the Tennant Collection this
_chef-d’œuvre_ passed to Mr. Jules S. Bache.
A charming picture of Lady Elizabeth Hamilton, or “Lady Betty
Hamilton,” as a child of five years, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds,
now hangs in the Widener Collection at _Lynnewood Hall_, Elkins Park,
Pennsylvania. The little girl is seated on a bank facing the spectator
and is shown at full length, wearing a pink dress over a large hoop,
with low neck and short sleeves, and a spray of flowers at her neck. In
her hands she holds a bouquet of bright flowers. This picture, painted
in 1758, belonged to the Duke of Argyll and afterwards to the Earl of
Normanton.
“The Eighteenth Century,” says Max Roldt, “has often been called the
_Age of Grace_. If I were asked how this name could best be justified,
I should point without a moment’s hesitation to the portraits by George
Romney. Others painted graceful women in graceful dresses and graceful
poses, but Romney personified Grace, made her his goddess; and it was
her portrait which he painted over and over again under different
lineaments and with various features. See his _Lady Derby_ as she
sits on a bank quietly dreaming under the trees; her legs are lightly
crossed; her elbow rests on her knee so that her long, fine hand just
touches her chin without actually supporting the pure oval of the
head; with her white, muslin dress pulled up showing the underskirt of
the _broché_ satin of the same hue, is she not the very embodiment of
grace?”
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON.
_George Romney
(1734–1802)._
_Collection of the late
Mr. Henry E. Huntington._
Who tied that white band over the big hat--Romney or Emma? It was
certainly a very original idea!
“_Three quarters in a straw hat called Emma_, finished for Mr.
Crawford,” is the way this picture is referred to in John Romney’s
_Memoirs_; and in Romney’s own Ledger this note occurs: “Three quarters
paid for by Mr. Crawford, 30 guineas, Sept. 15, 1792, and sent home to
Mr. Crawford’s No. 48 Brook Street, July 21, 1792.”
At three-quarter, then, seated in a chair, dressed in white and wearing
the conspicuous “straw hat,” trimmed with a broad band of ribbon tied
into large bows, “Emma” looks at us rather pensively,--almost sadly.
The pose is alluringly graceful and easy, but the swirling lines, when
analysed, show the thought and art of a master. It is like a graceful
melody of Mozart. Contour, beauty, and rhythm all are here!
Romney painted no fewer than thirty pictures of the “Divine Emma,” in
character and with titles, and fourteen portraits, without titles; and,
besides, he painted many replicas and variants of these portraits.
Emma Hart came into Romney’s life in 1782, taken to the painter’s
studio in Cavendish Square one April morning by the Hon. Charles
Francis Greville, second son of the Earl of Warwick, with whom she was
then living. Romney was instantly struck by her extraordinary beauty,
vivacity, and talent for posing. From this first picture, entitled
_Nature_ and representing Emma with a little black spaniel under
arm, for which Greville paid twenty guineas, Romney produced portrait
after portrait in various characters: Alope; Ariadne; Bacchante; In a
Black Hat; Calypso (perhaps the same as Ariadne); Cassandra; Circe;
Comedy; Comic Muse; Cybele; Daphne (perhaps the same as Bacchante);
Contemplation; Emma in a Straw Hat (see page 405); Euphrosyne; Gipsy;
Iphigenia; Joan of Arc; Kate (same as Ariadne); Magdalen; Medea;
Meditation; with Miniature in Belt; Miranda; Lady Hamilton in Morning
Dress; Nature; Nun; Pythian Priestess; Reading the Gazette; St.
Cecilia; Sensibility; Serena; Servant’s Cap; Shepherdess; Sigismunda;
Spinning-Wheel; Supplication; With Vesuvius in the Distance; Welsh
Girl; Wood Nymph (same as Alope).
Portraits without titles are: Seated resting head on right hand,
white dress; Bust to left showing hands, head leaning on right hand,
forefinger on chin, bare neck and shoulders, blue and white drapery;
Half-length, life-size, head facing, resting on crossed hands, light
dress, colored scarf twisted around the head, arms bare to elbow,
leaning on table; Head looking up to left; Head looking up to left
(oval); Head to left with startled expression (sketch); Three-quarter
length figure seated to left looking back over left shoulder, head
resting on left hand, white dress and cap and colored sash; Half figure
turned to right, white dress, white drapery around head (several
versions); Head, shoulders, full face, low cut white dress, dark curly
hair; Bust facing front, face looking down reading a book, white dress,
brown background; Bust, life-size looking upward and smiling; White
veil over head; Head and shoulders looking at spectator and smiling,
dark red dress cut low, brown hair falling over shoulders, turban; Half
figure directed to left looking at spectator, dark dress, white fichu,
dark felt hat with broad brim and bunch of feathers, hair bound with
blue ribbon, hands resting on lap, white lace cuffs.
[Illustration:
_Collection of the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington_
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
--_George Romney_]
The story of Emma, Lady Hamilton, is a strange one. She was born on
April 26, 1761, at Denhall, Chester, the only child of Henry Lyon, a
blacksmith: no one knows why she took the name of Hart. While she was
a child, her mother moved to Hawarden, entering the service of Mrs.
Thomas, wife of the parish doctor, and Emma remained there until she
was sixteen, earning her living as nursery-maid and waiting-woman. We
find her in London in her eighteenth year employed in the celebrated
Temple of Health, of which the notorious empiric, Dr. Graham, was
the originator and proprietor, presiding there as the “lovely Hebe
Vestina, Rosy Goddess of Health.” Here, at certain times of day, the
“lovely Hebe” and the famous quack could be seen buried up to their
necks in the mudbaths, Dr. Graham’s hair dressed according to the
latest expression of the perruquier’s taste and Hebe with one of those
towering head-dresses of the day, powdered and decorated with flowers,
feathers, ropes of pearls, and gewgaws of many kinds.
Sir Walter Armstrong is of the opinion that Emma Hart sat for
Gainsborough’s _Musidora Bathing her Feet_ (in the National Gallery,
London). “The features,” he says, “are those of Emma Lyon refined, the
hair is hers, and the rest of the figure is what we find in several of
Romney’s pictures.”
There is a very good reason that this might be so, for Gainsborough
rented one part of Schomberg House, Pall Mall, and Dr. Graham rented
the other. Consequently, Gainsborough had every opportunity of seeing
the lovely Emma very frequently.
While presiding at Dr. Graham’s establishment, Emma attracted the
attention of Sir Henry Featherstonehaugh of _Up Park_, Sussex, who
persuaded her to leave the Temple and reside at _Up Park_. In the
following year she placed herself under the protection of the Hon.
Charles Greville.
In 1784 Sir Charles’s uncle, Sir William Hamilton, his Majesty’s
Ambassador at Naples, came to London on a visit, a widower, a man of
distinguished tastes, an art-connoisseur, a lover of music, and a
descendant of a noble family. Sir William became fascinated with Emma
and there was a clever transfer of Emma, not to the credit of either of
these dashing “blades.” Ultimately Emma joined Sir William in Naples,
where she was lodged at the British Embassy and treated with the
distinction due royalty, having, moreover, her carriage, boat, livery,
and other appurtenances of state. In a letter to the Hon. Charles, Emma
says: “Sir William is very fond of me and very kind to me. The house
is full of painters painting me. He has now got nine pictures of me
and two a-painting. Marchant is cutting my head in stone, that is in
cameo for a ring. There is another man modelling me in wax and another
in clay. All the artists is come from Rome to study from me, so that
Sir William as fitted up a room that is called the painting-room. Sir
William is never a moment from me. He goes no where without me. He has
no dinners but what I can be of the party. Nobody comes without they
are civil to me.”
On Sept. 6, 1791, the infatuated Ambassador married Emma in Marylebone
Church, the Marquis of Abercorn, Sir William’s kinsman, acting as best
man. During the months preceding the wedding Emma sat almost daily to
Romney.
On June 19, 1791, Romney wrote to William Hayley: “At present and the
greatest part of this summer, I shall be engaged in painting pictures
from the _divine lady_. I cannot give her any other epithet for
I think her superior to all womankind. I have two pictures to paint
of her for the Prince of Wales. She says she must see you before she
leaves England, which will be in the beginning of September. She asked
me if you would not write my life. I told her you had begun it; then
she said she hoped you would have much to say of her in the life, as
she prided herself on being my model.”
Romney also gave a party in Emma’s honor, on which occasion she
displayed her remarkable talents. Romney wrote:
“She performed in my house last week, singing and acting before some of
the nobility with most astonishing power. She is the talk of the whole
town, and really surpasses everything, both in singing and acting,
that ever appeared. Gallini offered her two thousand pounds a year and
two benefits if she would engage with him, on which Sir William said
pleasantly that he had engaged her for life.”
Directly after her marriage Lady Hamilton gave Romney a sitting. His
_Diary_ has these dates:
“Sept. 5 Mon. Mrs. Hart at 9.
Sept. 6 Tues. Lady Hamilton at 11.”
Sir William and Lady Hamilton left soon afterwards for Naples and
Romney and Emma never met again.
Sir William Hamilton died in 1803; but from 1796 Emma had lived with
and for Lord Nelson until his death in the Battle of Trafalgar. Emma
died at Calais, Jan. 15, 1815.
The portrait shown here (30 × 25 inches), belonged to Tankerville
Chamberlayne, Esq., and then passed into the Collection of Alfred C. de
Rothschild, Esq.
England indirectly owes to Lady Hamilton one of Nelson’s great
victories. When Nelson was in pursuit of the French, it was Lady
Hamilton who obtained the order from the King of Naples for the fleet
to enter port for provisions and water. Nelson thereupon entered the
harbor of Syracuse, watered his fleet, and fought the victorious Battle
of the Nile. A few months later Lady Hamilton and Nelson managed to
rescue the Royal family of Naples by taking them through a subterranean
passage and by boats to Nelson’s ship, the _Vanguard_. “The world
owes it to Lady Hamilton,” says John Paget, “that the sister of Marie
Antoinette did not share her horrible fate--that another head, as fair
as that which fell into the basket of sawdust in front of the Tuileries
on the 16th of October, 1793, did not roll on the scaffold at Naples in
1799. When we come to take the account as it stood between the world
and Lady Hamilton when it finally closed in 1815, we find it strangely
changed since 1791. The balance has turned. It is the world, it is
humanity, that is the debtor.”
What a strange career! A woman of matchless beauty, artistic gifts of
a high order, mental brilliance, generosity, charm, and kindness of
heart, and, moreover, able to educate herself in the ways of society,
admired, and courted by princes, artists, and men of powers, the
intimate friend of the Queen of Naples, the beloved of Lord Nelson, the
deity of Romney, enjoying at one time all that wealth and distinction
could give and at the end forlorn, poor, and deserted, and dying in a
foreign country--such was the life of Emma, Lady Hamilton!
How beautifully Humphrey Ward sums up the whole situation:
“We know that in later years many painters tried their skill upon
her--Reynolds once, Madame Vigée Le Brun at least twice, Angelica
Kauffman probably, and many an Italian painter and sculptor to whom
she sat in Sir William’s painting-room at Naples. But none of these
artists, not even Reynolds himself, in the well-known _Bacchante_,
made of the most beautiful woman in the world anything that was
distinctive, anything that was much removed from the commonplace. It is
Romney alone who has preserved the life of those wonderful features,
of that radiant hair, and of the multitudinous phases of expression
through which this born actress, inspired by his suggestions, passed
seemingly at will. Her name remains inseparably bound, though in very
different ways, with the names of two great men--a hero and a painter.
In the _Chronique scandaleuse_ of a hundred years ago, Emma
belongs to Nelson; in the history of art, she belongs to Romney.”
ANNE, LADY DE LA POLE.
_George Romney
(1734–1802)._
_Collection of the
Hon. Alvan T. Fuller._
The portrait represented here of Anne, Lady de la Pole, oils on canvas
(49 × 39½ inches), was painted in 1786 after the great Lady Hamilton
period. The dress is of white satin with puffed sleeves of white mull
and a sash of pale green with gold fringe. The slippers, of pale green,
match the sash. The hair is powdered and draped with a white veil.
A critic notes that “the sheen of the white satin dress has since it
was painted one hundred and forty years ago become slightly tinged with
mauve thus completely harmonizing with the light color of the sash and
shoes. The manipulation of the light on the right side of the picture
gives a mellow autumnal atmosphere to the portrait of a dignified and
beautiful woman.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of the Hon. Alvan T. Fuller_
ANNE, LADY DE LA POLE
--_George Romney_]
Anne, Lady de la Pole, was the only daughter of John Templer, Esq.,
of Stover House, Devon, and was married in January, 1781, to Sir John
William Pole, sixth Baronet and son of Sir John Pole of Shute, Devon,
whom he succeeded in 1766. Sir John assumed by “sign-manual” the name
of de la Pole.
At the same time that he made this beautiful portrait, Romney also
painted Sir John de la Pole, as a companion piece. Lady de la Pole died
in 1832.
THE HON. MRS. GRANT OF KILGRASTON.
_Sir Henry Raeburn
(1756–1823)._
_Collection of
Mr. C. Fisher._
This picture comes from the Collection of Colonel Walter Brown of
Renfrew and was formerly in the Collection of the Hon. Mr. Stuart Gray.
It is an oil on canvas (30 × 24 inches), depicting _Mrs. Grant of
Kilgraston_, daughter of Francis, Lord Grey. The lady is turned
three quarters to the left and wears a dark gown with deep loose frill
of white around the neck. Her hair falls in careless curls over her
brow. The background is plain.
Compared with Sir Joshua Reynolds’s some two thousand portraits,
Raeburn’s some seven or eight hundred is small; but it is, after all, a
goodly number.
“Raeburn,” in the words of his fellow-townsman, Robert Louis Stevenson,
“was a born painter of portraits. He looked people shrewdly between the
eyes, surprised their manners in their face and had possessed himself
of what was essential in their character before they had been many
minutes in his studio. What he was so swift to perceive he conveyed to
the canvas almost in the moment of conception.”
Raeburn, born in Stockbridge, a suburb of Edinburgh, in 1756, became
the leading Scottish portrait-painter, President of the Royal Society
of Artists at Edinburgh, and a Royal Academician in 1815, presenting in
1821 his diploma picture _The Boy with Rabbit_. Raeburn was knighted by
George IV in 1822.
Raeburn was almost entirely self-taught; and it seems strange that with
practically no training, as the world understands this word, that he
should have risen to the circle of great painters. Many of the greatest
Italian painters of the Renaissance began life as goldsmiths. So did
Raeburn. After a preliminary education at the famous Heriot’s Hospital
in Edinburgh, he was apprenticed to a goldsmith in that city. Next he
took up miniature-painting and passed on to oils, devoting himself to
portraits. Success came quickly and early. At the age of twenty-two
Raeburn was thoroughly established as the leading portrait-painter in
Scotland and had married a wealthy widow of title. A visit to London
and Rome in 1785–7 was the only break in his enviable life, passed
in the greatest serenity replete with domestic happiness, social
distinction, and artistic fertility. Practically an entire generation
of the men and women of Scotland, most of them celebrities--sat to
Raeburn in his studio.
As Raeburn’s portraits are neither signed nor dated and no very marked
periods emphasize his style, it is difficult to assign accurate dates
to any of his works unless some special year is attached to them.
Moreover, no lists of the sitters and note-books are known. If he
kept them they were destroyed. However, as Raeburn advanced in years
he attained more and more command of technique, his appreciation of
character became deeper, and his expression of it more complete.