'A curious book might be written on the reputation of painters,' says
Mr. Croker in a note to his edition of Boswell; 'Horace Walpole talked
at one time of Ramsay as of equal fame with Reynolds; and Hayley
dedicated his lyre (such as it was) to Romney. What is a picture of
Ramsay or Romney now worth?'[14]
[14] The remark has reference to certain odes by Cumberland in honour of
Romney, and to Johnson's comment thereupon:--'Why, sir, they would have
been thought as good as odes commonly are if Cumberland had not put his
name to them; but a name immediately draws censure, unless it be a name
that bears down everything before it. Nay, Cumberland has made his odes
subsidiary to the fame of another man. They might have run well enough
by themselves; but he has not only loaded them with a name--he has made
them carry double.'
That fortune is inconstant and that reputation is a bubble, it was
hardly necessary for Mr. Croker to assure us. Unquestionably the fame of
the painter, as of other people, undergoes vicissitudes: varies very
much accordingly as it is appraised by contemporaries or posterity. But
it may be open to doubt whether the editor of Boswell does not
undervalue the artists specified in illustration of his proposition:
more especially Romney. That any benefit has accrued to Romney's fame
from the unsafe sort of embalmment it has received in the rhymes of such
poetasters as Hayley and Cumberland cannot be contended. Even Pope's
verse, though it has saved a name from oblivion, has failed to redeem it
from contempt. The great poet condescended to sing the praises of
Jervas, the pupil of Kneller; but the renown of the painter, Pope's
praises notwithstanding, was fleeting enough. We read of Miss Reynolds
marvelling at the complete disappearance of Jervas's pictures. 'My
dear,' said Sir Joshua, in explanation, 'they are all up in the garrets
now.' For just as humble guests resign their places, content with very
inferior accommodation, when more distinguished visitors arrive upon the
scene, so bad pictures yield to better works of art, and quit the walls
of galleries and saloons to take refuge in servants' bedrooms, back
attics, and stable lofts; suffering much neglect and contumely in
comparison with their former high estate and fortune.
If we may assume that Romney's pictures are now but lightly valued, it
must be conceded that the time has been when they were very differently
estimated. For in his day Romney was the admitted rival of Reynolds,
whose pupil and biographer Northcote, an unwilling witness, admitting
with reluctance anything to his preceptor's disadvantage, says,
expressly:--'Certain it is that Sir Joshua was not much employed in
portraits after Romney grew in fashion.' Reynolds, it cannot be doubted,
was jealous of Romney, and spoke of him always rather acridly as 'the
man in Cavendish Square;' just as Barry was at one time fond of
designating Reynolds 'the man in Leicester Fields.' 'There are two
factions in art,' said Lord Chancellor Thurlow; 'Romney and Reynolds
divide the town; and I am of the Romney faction.' In his own day,
indeed, the recognition of the artist was remarkable. Flaxman, the
sculptor, maintained him to be 'the first of all our painters for poetic
dignity of conception.' 'Between ourselves,' wrote Hayley to Romney's
son, 'I think your father as much superior to Reynolds in _genius_ as he
was inferior in _worldly wisdom_.' Upon his death three biographies of
Romney were given to the world. Cumberland wrote a brief but able
memoir. Hayley produced an elaborate life, embellished with engravings
and epistles in verse. And the Reverend John Romney published an
interesting, if not an impartial, account of his father's career. Yet
these works have not prevented the painter's name from gradually losing
its hold upon the public memory, nor his pictures from sinking far
beneath the valuation originally set upon them. Accident, and the want
of a permanent public gallery in which the best achievements of English
painters may be stored and studied and admired by their countrymen,
have contributed to these results. Upon the great occasions when English
pictures have been assembled for exhibition, somehow Romney has been but
inadequately represented. In the Fine Art Gallery of the Great
Exhibition of 1862 there was but one portrait by Romney to thirty-four
examples of Reynolds. In the finer and more complete collection at
Manchester, in 1857, there were five Romneys to thirty-eight pictures by
Reynolds. Altogether Sir Joshua's memory has been amply avenged for any
neglect he endured in his lifetime by reason of the undue ascendancy of
Romney.
George Romney was born at Beckside, near Dalton, Lancashire, on the 15th
December 1734, the son of John Romney, a carpenter and cabinet-maker,
who, above his station in taste and knowledge, is alleged to have
introduced into the county various improvements in agricultural
engineering. Of his union with Ann Simpson, the daughter of a Cumberland
yeoman, four sons were born:--William, who died on the eve of his
departure to the West Indies, in the employ of a merchant there; James,
who rose to the rank of a lieutenant-colonel in the service of the East
India Company; Peter, who gave promise of considerable art-talent, but
died in his thirty-fourth year; and George, the painter, under mention.
Of a sedate and steady disposition, but somewhat dull and 'backward' at
his books, George Romney, in his eleventh year, was taken from school,
and, until he arrived at twenty-one, was employed in his father's
workshop. The lad had manifested skill as a carver in wood; had
constructed a violin for himself, and read with deep interest Da Vinci's
_Treatise on Painting_, making copies of the engravings. His natural
talent soon further developed itself. His father had a business
acquaintance with one Mr. Alderman Redman, of Kendal, upholsterer. The
Alderman's sister, a Mrs. Gardner, chanced to see some of young Romney's
drawings, was struck with their cleverness, and encouraged him to
persevere, and to make his first essay in portraiture by taking her
likeness. The boy produced a drawing that was much extolled; further
evidences of his enthusiasm for art were forthcoming; and eventually
John Romney was induced to take his son to Kendal, and apprentice him to
an itinerant painter named Christopher Steele, a showy gentleman, who
had been in Paris, aped French manners, wore fantastic clothes, and was
popularly known as _Count_ Steele--a sort of art-Dulcamara, in fact.
Articles of apprenticeship were duly signed, sealed, and delivered
between John Romney, cabinet-maker, and George his son, of the one part,
and Christopher Steele, painter, of the other part. George Romney was
bound for the term of four years, to serve his master faithfully and
diligently, to obey his reasonable commands, and keep his secrets; John
Romney was to provide his son with 'suitable and necessary clothes, both
linen and woollen;' and Christopher Steele, in consideration of
twenty-one pounds, covenanted to instruct his apprentice in the art or
science of a painter, and to find him meat, drink, washing, and lodging
during the said term. Steele was no great artist, though he had studied
under Carlo Vanloo, of Paris. He troubled himself little enough as to
his pupil's progress, employing him for the most part in grinding
colours and in the drudgery of the studio. But George Romney made the
best of his opportunities. And he was not unhappy. He had fallen in love
with Mary Abbott, one of two sisters living with their widowed mother,
in humble circumstances, at Kendal. But soon Steele was bent on quitting
Kendal, had made up his mind to move to York, and directed his pupil to
prepare to accompany him forthwith. The lovers, of course, were in
despair at the thought of their approaching separation. In the end they
secured their mutual fidelity by a hasty and private marriage. Reproved
for his precipitancy and imprudence, Romney replied that his marriage
would surely act as a spur to his application: 'My thoughts being now
still and not obstructed by youthful follies, I can practise with more
diligence and success than ever.' While at York he zealously devoted
himself to his art. His wife, left at Kendal, assisted him with such
small sums as she could spare, sending him half a guinea at a time,
hidden under the seal of a letter; in return he forwarded to her his own
portrait, his first work in oil.
After staying nearly a year in York, Steele and his apprentice moved to
Lancaster. Meeting with little encouragement there, Steele, always
restless and embarrassed, determined to try his fortune in Ireland. The
pupil was now very anxious to be quit of his preceptor; he longed to be
practising on his own account. He had at different times lent Steele
small sums of money, amounting altogether to ten pounds. He now proposed
that both debt and articles of apprenticeship should be cancelled--that
the release of the debtor should be the consideration for the freedom of
the apprentice. Steele consented, and George Romney became his own
master.
His prices until he went to London were certainly not high: two guineas
for a three-quarter portrait and six for a whole figure on a kit-cat
canvas. The only way of making this poor tariff remunerative was by
extreme rapidity of execution; and few men have ever painted so rapidly
as Romney. But this rapid manner has its disadvantages. If habitually
persisted in, it in time renders thorough finish impossible to the
painter. An absolute necessity in Romney's early life, it became a
distinct vice in his after works. To this were in part attributable the
crowd of incomplete canvases the painter left behind him at his death,
and the characteristic sketchiness traceable even in his most esteemed
pictures.
At York he disposed of twenty pictures by a lottery, which produced
little more than forty pounds. Among these works was a scene from
_Tristram Shandy_, upon which he had bestowed some pains; for at York
Romney had attracted the notice of Laurence Sterne (whose portrait
Steele had painted), and received at his hands marks of attention and
friendship.
Twenty-seven years old, Romney began to weary of provincial
triumphs,--to long for the wider field of exertion and the more
enlightened recognition he could only find in the capital. He had toiled
early and late to acquire money and skill sufficient for a creditable
appearance in town. A son and daughter had been born of his marriage,
yet his domestic ties could not bind him to the north, while his
ambition was prompting him so urgently to seek certain fame and fortune
in the south. He managed to raise a sum of one hundred pounds. Taking
fifty for his travelling expenses, he left the balance for the support
of his wife and children, and without a single letter of recommendation
or introduction, set forth to try his chances alone in London. He was
soon obliged to send for twenty pounds more, of the fifty he had left
with his wife. He started southward on the 14th of March 1762, in
company with two other Kendal gentlemen, on horseback. He stayed a day
at Manchester, where he met his old master Count Steele, who warmly
greeted his pupil, and rode with the party next day as far as Stockport.
After much alarm from highwaymen--for in those days country banks were
not, and every traveller was his own purse-bearer--Mr. Romney and his
friends arrived safely at the Castle Inn, London, on the 21st March. The
painter remained at the inn for a fortnight, until he was able to settle
down comfortably in lodgings, in Dove Court, Mansion House. He was soon
hard at work upon 'The Death of Rizzio,' adorning his walls with
pictures he had brought with him or sent for afterwards from Kendal,
such as 'King Lear,' 'Elfrida,' 'The Death of Lefevre,' and a few
portraits of friends. The Rizzio picture has been represented as 'a work
of extraordinary merit, combining energetic action with strong
expression.' Its fate was sad enough; attracting no notice, producing no
profit, and at length becoming an incumbrance in the studio, the painter
destroyed it with his own hands; or, more probably, cut it up and sold
it piecemeal, for one of his biographers mentions having seen certain
heads by Romney in which terror was strongly depicted, and which had
evidently formed portions of some larger work. In the August following
his arrival in town he quitted Dove Court for Bearbinder's Lane. Here he
executed several portraits at three guineas each, and painted his 'Death
of Wolfe,' to which was awarded a prize of fifty guineas by the Society
of Arts. Out of this picture arose much controversy. Adverse critics
objected that the work could not with propriety be regarded as an
historical composition, because, in point of fact, no historian had yet
recorded the event it pretended to represent; Wolfe's death, however
glorious and memorable, was too recent to be within the legitimate scope
of high art! Further, Mr. Romney's work was condemned as 'a mere coat
and waistcoat picture,' and much fault was found with his accurate
rendering of the regimentals of the officers and soldiers and the silk
stockings of the general. A few years later Benjamin West was greatly
praised for his treatment of the same subject; Reynolds, after much
deliberation and the statement, in the first instance, of a directly
contrary opinion, avowing that the young American's picture would
occasion 'a complete revolution in art.' It had been the plan,
theretofore, in pictures of historical events of whatever period, to
portray the characters engaged in the garb (or no garb) of antiquity;
but West had declined, in placing upon his canvas an event of the year
1759, to introduce the costume of classic times; altogether disregarding
the dislike of the connoisseurs to cocked hats, cross-belts,
laced-coats, and bayonets, and their demands for bows and arrows,
helmets, bucklers, and nakedness. But, in truth, West was merely
following in the footsteps of George Romney, who had already produced a
'Death of Wolfe' in the correct dress of the period. There were few to
laud poor Romney, however. Even the decision which gave him the prize
was reversed, and the premium ultimately awarded to Mortimer, who had
exhibited at the same time a picture of 'Edward the Confessor seizing
the Treasurer of his mother.' Romney was obliged to be content with a
gratuity of twenty-five guineas.
The painter's friends at once charged Reynolds with an active share in
effecting this result; and indeed it seems clear that the reversal of
the decision was due to his interference. They averred that he was
anything but an impartial judge; that he was well aware the 'Death of
Wolfe' was the work of a portrait painter; that he could not bear the
thought of a rival near his throne, and had laid down the principle
'that it was impossible for two painters in the same department of the
art to be long in friendship with each other.' He would not permit an
obscure painter from the country to carry off a prize from a student of
Mortimer's pretensions. With Mortimer he was on terms of friendship: his
fellow-pupil under Hudson, and, above all, no portrait painter. What
measure of truth there may have been in these allegations it is now
difficult to decide. Thenceforward Reynolds and Romney were certainly
enemies. Between the two painters, indeed, there never existed the
slightest intercourse of any kind.
The curious treatment he had received from the Society of Arts made much
stir, however, and brought the young painter friends and patrons.
Probably the next best thing to securing the friendship of the future
President of the Academy was the reputation of having incurred his
enmity. 'The Death of Wolfe' was purchased by Mr. Rowland Stephenson,
the banker, who presented it to Governor Varelst, by whom it was placed
in the Council-Chamber at Calcutta. Romney moved from the city to the
Mews-gate, Charing Cross, probably to be nearer the exhibition in Spring
Gardens, and the Artists' Academy in St. Martin's Lane. At this time, it
may be noted, Dance and Mortimer were living in Covent Garden, while
Hogarth and Reynolds had set up their easels in Leicester Fields. Romney
now raised his prices for portraits to five guineas, and saved money
sufficient to enable him to pay a long-dreamt-of visit to Paris. He was
absent six weeks; and on his return took chambers in Gray's Inn, where
he painted several portraits of Members of the legal profession,
including Sir Joseph Yates, one of the judges of the Court of the King's
Bench. In Gray's Inn, too, he painted his picture of the 'Death of King
Edmund,' which, in 1765, obtained a prize of fifty guineas from the
Society of Arts. For this work, however, he was unable to find a
purchaser. In 1767 his circumstances had so far improved that he felt
himself justified in moving to a house in Great Newport Street, within a
few doors of Reynolds, where he remained until his visit to Italy, in
1773. Meanwhile his friends were loud in their laudation of the prodigy
who, in historical works, they declared, promised to rival the great
masters, and in portraiture threatened to wrest the palm from Reynolds
himself. He now raised his prices again, charging twelve guineas for a
three-quarter portrait, and found no lack of sitters at the increased
rate. Whether or not he sought for academic honours is not clear;
certain it is they were not conferred upon him: and he invariably chose
to send his pictures to the rooms of the Chartered Society, in Spring
Gardens, rather than to the exhibitions of the Royal Academy. Artists,
in every way his inferiors, were welcomed to the ranks of 'the forty;'
but to Romney never were granted even the poorer dignities of
associateship. This neglect of him he always ascribed to the sinister
influence of Reynolds and his followers, among whom, in this instance,
must be numbered Fuseli, who was much given to sneering at Romney as 'a
coat and waistcoat painter,' and who, in his edition of _Pilkington_,
says, pertly, 'Romney was made for his times, and his times for him.'
Allan Cunningham suggests, what is probably true, that Romney was a man
likely to take a sort of morbid pleasure in his isolation, and in the
odium which would necessarily devolve upon the Academy by its neglect of
an artist of his eminence. His name has gone to swell the list of
painters of mark who have ventured to defy the influence and opposition
of the Academy, and have single-handed fought their way to success
notwithstanding.
In 1771, through the introduction of Cumberland, Mrs. Yates, the
actress, sat to Romney for a picture of the 'Tragic Muse.' Of course,
this work was completely eclipsed by Reynolds's 'Tragic Muse,' painted
some thirteen years later. Notwithstanding the demerits of the
President's picture, the plagiarism of the pose and draperies from
Michael Angelo's Joel in the Capella Sistina, the incongruities of the
theatrical state-chair in the clouds, the gold lace, plaited hair,
imperial tiara and strings of pearls,--still the majestic beauty of his
model, her classical features, broad brow, grand form and superb eyes,
enabled him to surpass immeasurably the effort of his younger and less
favoured rival. Mrs. Yates, though an accomplished actress, was far from
possessing the personal gifts of the Kembles' sister. To Romney's studio
Cumberland also brought Garrick, with some hope that the great actor
might interest himself in favour of the painter. But Garrick was too
closely allied with Sir Joshua; he was wilfully blinded to the merits of
Romney. He criticised with most impertinent candour the works he found
in the studio, pausing before a large family group of portraits and with
an affected imitation of the attitude of the chief figure, saying, 'Upon
my word, Mr. Romney, this is a very regular, well-ordered family; and
this is a very bright-rubbed mahogany table, at which that motherly,
good lady is sitting; and this worthy good gentleman in the scarlet
waistcoat is doubtless a very excellent subject--to the state, I mean
(if all these are his children)--but not for your art, Mr. Romney, if
you mean to pursue it with that success which I hope will attend you!'
His 'pasteboard Majesty of Drury Lane,' in truth, knew nothing of the
painter's art; and from any other than Romney would have incurred, as he
well merited, most unceremonious ejection from the studio. He was safe
enough with Romney, however, as he probably well knew. The painter,
deeply mortified, silently turned the family picture with its face to
the wall. He was extremely sensitive: a curious diffidence mingled with
his conviction of his own cleverness. He was readily disconcerted: at a
laugh, a jest, a few words of satiric criticism, he lost faith in
himself, interest in his works; the subject which had promised so much
pleasure now seemed to him fruitful only in pain and disappointment; he
would seek at once a new occupation, and add another to a growing pile
of canvases which the ridicule and captiousness of others, and his own
weakness and caprice, had combined to leave for ever incomplete. Perhaps
it was by way of balm for the wound he had unwittingly inflicted, by
bringing Garrick to the studio, that Cumberland published in the Public
Advertiser his verses upon the painters of the day, with especial
mention of Romney and his picture of 'Contemplation,' which work, the
poet says in a note, 'the few who attended the unfashionable exhibition
in Spring Gardens may possibly recollect.' Already the success of the
Royal Academy was telling disastrously upon the 'Society of Artists of
Great Britain' to which Romney had attached himself.
In 1773, our painter, in his thirty-ninth year, and in receipt of an
income of some twelve hundred pounds, derived solely from his
profession, set sail for Italy, bearing with him letters of introduction
from the Dukes of Gloucester and Richmond to the Pope, and accompanied
by his close friend, Humphrey, the miniature-painter. His Holiness gave
gracious permission to the artist to erect scaffolds in the Vatican, the
better to make copies of the Raphaels which decorate the palace.
Among the pictures executed during Romney's Italian tour was a portrait
of the eccentric Wortley Montagu (Lady Mary's son), who had assumed the
manners and attire of a Turk, and who, shortly after his sitting to the
painter, died from a bone sticking in his throat. Another work which he
brought back with him to England was a daring attempt to represent
'Providence brooding over chaos.' In later years, when Lord George
Gordon and his mob were sacking the Roman Catholic chapels throughout
London, and plundering the houses of all suspected of sympathy with the
Latin Church, Romney became alarmed lest his picture should attract the
attention of the rioters, and, regarded by them as an evidence of
idolatrous devotion, lead to the destruction of his house and property.
The canvas was at once removed out of sight. At the sale of his works,
on the death of the painter, his son changed the name of the picture to
'Jupiter Pluvius,' under which more marketable guise it soon found a
purchaser.
On the 7th of June 1775, Romney arrived again in England: his return
being celebrated by glowing strains from Cumberland's ready muse. As
Gibbon said of the poetic praises of the painter's friends--'If they did
not contribute much to his professional prosperity, they might be justly
called an elegant advertisement of his merit.' Sitters of all ranks now
crowded to his studio. If his absence from England had done nothing else
for him, it had wonderfully enhanced his reputation. But persons of
taste and quality were of opinion that his visit to Italy had wrought
marvels. They pretended to see a striking improvement, not merely in the
mechanical, but also in the mental part of his work; his conceptive
powers were found to be strengthened and enriched, and his method of
painting benefited beyond measure by his Italian studies; he was no
longer cold, and harsh, and heavy; all was now warmth and light,
tenderness and beauty. It was at this time that Reynolds began to speak
of Romney as 'the man in Cavendish Square.' He had established himself
in the spacious mansion which the death of Cotes, the Royal Academician,
had left vacant, and which, it may be noted, after the expiry of
Romney's tenancy, was occupied by Sir Martin Archer Shee. Not without
considerable anxiety, however, did Romney enter upon possession of his
new abode. He was seized with an irrepressible misgiving that he was
embarking upon a career of far greater expense than his success had
warranted, or than the emoluments of his profession would enable him to
maintain. 'In his singular constitution,' his biographer Hayley here
finds occasion to observe, 'there was so much nervous timidity united to
great bodily strength and to enterprising and indefatigable ambition,
that he used to tremble, when he walked every morning in his new
habitation, with a painful apprehension of not finding business
sufficient to support him. These fears were only early flutterings of
that hypochondriacal disorder which preyed in secret on his comfort
during many years, and which, though apparently subdued by the cheering
exhortations of frendship and great professional prosperity, failed not
to show itself more formidably when he was exhausted by labour in the
decline of life.' His trepidation was quite groundless, however. He had
no lack of patrons or employment; the Duke of Richmond gave him generous
encouragement and support, sat for his own picture, in profile, and
commissioned portraits of Admiral Keppel, Mr. Burke, the Honourable Mrs.
Damer, Lord John Cavendish, Lord George Lennox, and others. The
painter's income soon sprung up to between three and four thousand a
year, produced by portraits only. In 1776 he was seriously ill from a
violent cold caught by standing in the rain, amongst the crowd outside
Drury Lane Theatre, waiting to witness Garrick's farewell performance.
He was cured, however, by Sir Richard Jebb, the eminent physician, who
prescribed a bottle of Madeira to his patient, and attended him from
that time forward in every illness, but generously declined to accept a
fee for his services.
And the Mary Abbott whom George Romney had married years before and left
behind at Kendal, with his son and daughter and thirty pounds, while he
sought his fortune alone in London--the wife, his union with whom was to
be as 'a spur to his application'--was she to be denied the sight of her
husband's success, a share in his prosperity, a place in his house in
Cavendish Square? It is hard to understand the utter unmanliness and
heartlessness of Romney's conduct in this respect. There is no word of
accusation against her--- no hint affecting her character--no question
as to her being in any way unworthy of his love and trust, and of her
rightful position by his side. His separation from her, in the first
instance, was, under all the circumstances of the case, no doubt
justifiable; and it is hardly possible to believe that his original
withdrawal from Kendal was in pursuance of a plan of deliberate
abandonment of his family. But for the protraction of this separation,
after the first necessity for it had passed away, there would seem to be
absolutely no excuse. His son, the Rev. John Romney, with a laudable
desire to serve his father's memory, urges, as some faint apology for
the painter's cruelty, that his affairs were at all times less
prosperous than they seemed; that his brothers were a heavy burden upon
him and drained him of his savings; that his professional journeys to
Paris and Rome consumed all the money he could raise; and that thus a
'succession of untoward circumstances threw impediments in the way of
good intent, till time and absence became impediments also.'
In truth, Romney appears to have been always curiously timid and
reticent; to have suffered from excessive moral cowardice. On his first
arrival in London and association with the young painters of the day, he
began to feel some shame at his early imprudence, and some alarm lest it
should present any hindrance to his professional advancement. He had
given 'hostages to fortune,' and dreaded the result. He was thus
persistently silent on the subject; and, as time went on, it became more
and more difficult for him to avow the marriage he had from the first
made so much a matter of mystery. And then, too, the prosperous unions
of other artists, his contemporaries, excited his jealousy and increased
his apprehensions. He began to think it indispensable to the success of
a painter that he should marry well. Nathaniel Dance had been united to
Mrs. Drummer, known as 'the Yorkshire fortune,' with eighteen thousand a
year. John Astley had secured the hand of Lady Duckenfield, with an
income of almost equal value. Then, from his literary and poetic friends
he was little likely to receive encouragement to act justly in such a
matter. Laurence Sterne was no especially good exemplar of conjugal
fidelity. Mr. Hayley and the rest indulged in extremely poetic views
concerning the privileges and prerogatives of genius; were opposed to
trammels and scruples of any kind in such respect; and poured round the
painter dense showers of versified adulation, so infused with ideality
and Platonism that the simple rules of right and wrong were quite washed
away by the harmonious and transcendental torrent. Romney, weak, vain,
selfish, suffered himself to be led down paths which, however flowery
and pleasant, were yet mean and contemptible enough, and listening to
the twanging of Hayley's lyre, turned a deaf ear to the pining of the
poor woman fading away, alone and deserted in the north--the Mary Abbott
whom he had vowed in his youth until death should them part to love,
honour, and cherish. For some thirty years the husband and wife never
set eyes upon each other--were absolutely separated.
He had now as much work as he could possibly execute. He was often at
his easel for thirteen hours a day, beginning at eight in the morning,
lighting his lamp when the daylight had gone, and toiling on sometimes
until midnight. He had five, and occasionally six, sitters a day. He
generally completed a three-quarter portrait in three or four sittings,
and could accomplish this easily, provided no hands were introduced into
the picture. The sittings varied in duration from three-quarters of an
hour to an hour and a half each. His only time now for ideal or
historical art was in the interval between the departure and arrival of
his sitters, or when they failed to keep their engagements with him; but
he would regard such disappointments with pleasure, having always at
hand a spare canvas upon which he could employ himself with some fancy
subject. Of course, this close application was not without injurious
effect upon him in the end. 'My health,' he wrote, at a later period of
his life, 'is not at all constant. My nerves give way, and I have no
time to go in quest of pleasure to prevent a decline of health. My hands
are full, and I shall be forced to refuse new faces at last, to be
enabled to finish the numbers I have in an unfinished state. I shall
regret the necessity of forbearing to take new faces; there is a delight
in novelty greater than in the profit gained by sending them home
finished. But it must be done.' His annual retirement for a month's
holiday to Hayley's house at Eartham was of little real service to his
health. He was compelled the while to attitudinize incessantly as a
genius. Hayley, in globose language, was always entreating his guest to
moderate his intense spirit of application, conjuring him to rest from
his excess of labour 'in the name of those immortal powers the Beautiful
and the Sublime,' etc., while he was at the same time urging the painter
to new and greater toils, teasing the jaded man with endless
suggestions, bewildering him with a jabber of sham sentimentality and
hazy æstheticism. 'Whenever Romney was my guest,' writes Hayley, 'I was
glad to put aside my own immediate occupation for the pleasure of
searching for and presenting to him a copious choice of such subjects as
might happily exercise his powers.' Poor Romney was permitted no rest.
Hayley was for ever in close attendance gratifying his own inordinate
vanity at the painter's cost. He produced four representations of
Serena, the heroine of Hayley's _Triumphs of Temper_. He painted a scene
from the _Tempest_ for Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, which project
Romney always claimed to have originated, and Hayley was in the studio
sitting for Prospero. At Hayley's house a small coterie of poetasters,
male and female, assembled for purposes of mutual glorification in the
most windbag sort of verse, and were glad to buy portraits and sketches
from the painter with such small coin as sonnets and stanzas, and poetic
epistles. Romney executes a likeness of Mrs. Hayley, and is rewarded
with eighty-eight glowing lines by her husband, who calls to his aid
Eolus, Orion, Boreas, Auster, Zephyr, Eurus, Famine, and Ceres for the
better decoration of his verse. He paints a portrait of Miss Seward, and
the lady's gratitude gushes forth in eulogy of
....the pleasures of the Hayleyan board,
Where, as his pencil, Romney's soul sublime
Glows with bold lines, original and strong, etc.
'Beloved and honoured Titiano!' she wrote, some years later; 'how that
name recalls the happy, happy hours I passed with you at Eartham; when
by the title 'Muse' you summoned me to the morning walk!' Amongst the
drossy twaddle which passed current as poetry at Eartham, a sonnet in
Romney's honour by a true poet--William Cowper--may be counted as pure
gold.
In the beginning of 1782 Emma Lyon, then known as Mrs. Hart, afterwards
as Lady Hamilton, first sat to Mr. Romney. Painters and poets enough had
already been busy celebrating her loveliness, the lady nothing loth. She
took pleasure in the full display of her charms: holding probably that
her beauty was not given her for herself alone, but that the whole
world, if it listed, might at least look on it and adore. At one time
indeed she was rumoured to have personated the Goddess of Health, when
the 'celestial' Doctor Graham was giving his strange and indecorous
lectures in Pall Mall; but that scandal has been contradicted. Certain
it is, however, that her witcheries effectually subjugated Romney and
Hayley. The painter went fairly mad about her; could not see her often
enough; was restless and miserable out of her presence; reduced the
number of his sitters, and admitted no visitors until noon, that he
might have time sufficient to devote to the beautiful Emma and her
portraits. This infatuation endured for years. 'At present,' he wrote to
Hayley, in 1791, 'and the greatest part of the 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.' For a
long time he seemed to be able only to paint Emma Lyon. His son
enumerates some two dozen portraits, in which she appears as Circe,
Iphigenia, St. Cecilia, Sensibility, a Bacchante, Alope, the Spinstress,
Cassandra (for the Shakespeare Gallery), Calypso, a Pythoness, Joan of
Arc, a Magdalen, etc.; some of these were left unfinished. But at one
time the form and features of his beautiful model appeared upon the
painter's canvas, let him try to paint what he would. The fair Emma had
absolutely enthralled him. Absent from the object of his adoration, he
was reduced to despair. He writes to Hayley, complaining that he has
discovered an alteration in his Emma's conduct: 'a coldness and neglect
seemed to have taken the place of her repeated declaration of regard.'
Hayley sends up some verses for the painter to copy and sign, beginning
'Gracious Cassandra,' and asking pitifully,
.... what cruel clouds have darkly chilled
Thy favour that to me was vital fire?
Oh, let it shine again: or worse than killed
Thy soul-sunk artist feels his art expire!
The poet seems to have been not less love-stricken. 'Her features,' he
writes, 'like the language of Shakespeare, could exhibit all the
feelings of nature and all the gradations of every passion with a most
fascinating truth and felicity of expression.' Presently the lady has
given her hand to Sir William Hamilton and set sail for Naples. She
makes peace with the painter, however, before her departure; calls upon
him, resumes her former kindness of manner, is as cordial with him as
ever, and sits to him for a portrait he is to paint _as a present to her
mother_. Poor Romney!
In 1794 there were symptoms of decay in the painter's constitution; his
mental infirmities increased. He became the victim of a sort of
intellectual superfetation. He was perpetually planning labours of a
magnitude which, from the first, rendered them hopelessly impracticable.
His brain was morbidly active, while his hand grew tremulous and
uncertain, and his sight dimmed. His manner became irritable, and more
than ever timid and suspicious. He wrote to his son: 'I have made many
grand designs; I have formed a system of original subjects, moral and my
own, and I think one of the grandest that has been thought of; but
nobody knows it. Hence, it is my view to wrap myself in retirement and
pursue these plans, as I begin to feel I cannot bear trouble of any
kind.' He quits his house in Cavendish Square and becomes the purchaser
of a retreat at Holly Bush Hill, Hampstead, after abandoning a project
he at one time entertained for the purchase of four acres near the
Edgware Road, and covering them with a group of fantastic buildings of
his own design. To the house at Hampstead he made many whimsical
additions, however, erecting a large picture and sculpture-gallery, a
wooden arcade or covered ride, a dining-room close to the kitchen, with
a buttery hatch opening into it, so that he and his guests might enjoy
beefsteaks 'hot and hot' upon the same plan as prevailed at the
Beefsteak Club, then occupying a room in the Lyceum Theatre. The cost of
these changes amounted to nearly three thousand pounds. With quite a
childish eagerness he took possession of his new house before the walls
were dry, and while the workmen were still completing the changes he had
ordered. Still he had not room enough for his numberless art-treasures.
His pictures were crammed and huddled away any and everywhere. Some were
arranged along the wooden arcade, where, exposed to the open air, and to
the alternate action of moisture and frost, they were almost entirely
destroyed in the course of the winter, while some were deliberately
stolen. The painter could do little work now: he could begin, but was
unable to finish or even to resume his undertaking. His appetite for art
seemed to fail him; he ceased to have faith in himself; he was preyed on
by nervous dejection; weighed down with dark alarms and vague
forebodings. Soon his head is swimming and his right hand numb with
incipient paralysis. Hayley visits him for the last time in April 1799,
and had 'the grief of perceiving that his increasing weakness of body
and mind afforded only a gloomy prospect for the residue of his life.'
He lays down his brush for ever. Suddenly, without a word to any one of
his intentions, he takes the northern coach and arrives at Kendal.
Fainting and exhausted, he is received with the utmost tenderness and
affection by his wife. No word of reproach for the neglect and solitude
to which he had doomed her for so many years escapes her lips. With
unremitting solicitude, with religious earnestness, this loving,
forgiving woman tends the sick-bed of the sinking man. His mind expires
before his body; for months he remains hopelessly imbecile, free from
suffering, but wholly unconscious; breathing his last at Kendal on the
15th of November 1802, in the sixty-eighth year of his age.
The inconsistency manifest between Romney's wanton cruelty in his
domestic character, and his reputation among his intimates and
contemporaries for great kindliness of nature, generosity, and general
worth, is remarkable enough. There are many men, however, who appear to
the least advantage when seen by the light of their own fireside. Hayley
says much of his friend's _extreme sensibility_:' his lips,' writes the
poet, 'quivered with emotions of pity at the sight of distress or at the
relation of a pathetic story.' Cumberland mentions that the painter was,
'by constitution, prone to tears.' Yet his charity was not for home
wear; the distress he did not see troubled him very little. It is vain
to seek for any sufficient apology for Romney's shameful treatment of
his wife and children. If it were possible to forget this deep stain
upon his character he would seem, in all other relations of life, to be
entitled to esteem and commendation. For the poor and needy he was
ready, not merely with his sensibility, but with his purse. To his
friends he was ever faithful and liberal. After attaining professional
eminence he was almost indifferent to the emoluments of his art, prizing
money much less for its own sake than for the recognition of his
position and abilities that it demonstrated; while to all young artists
he was especially kind and indulgent. He was the first to encourage
Flaxman, and to appreciate and applaud his works; was ever the cordial
and loving friend of the sculptor, as their correspondence amply
testifies. 'I always remember,' says Flaxman, 'Mr. Romney's notice of my
boyish years and productions with gratitude; his original and striking
conversation; his masterly, grand, and feeling compositions are
continually before me; and I still feel the benefits of his acquaintance
and recommendations.'
Romney's historical pictures are very numerous; though comparatively few
of them can be considered as completely finished works. According to
Allan Cunningham's estimate, for one really finished there are five half
done, and for five half done there are at least a dozen merely sketched
out on the canvas. The painter was all impulse; very eager and impatient
at the beginning, but soon wearied, and only by painful efforts and
extraordinary labour ever arriving at the conclusion of his
undertakings. There was a want of concentrative power about him; he was
ever frittering away his undeniable abilities upon a number of hastily
adopted projects, crudely conceived, and remorselessly abandoned when
the temperature of his enthusiasm lowered, or any unlooked-for
difficulties appeared in his path. How the erratic and desultory nature
of his mind was fostered and aggravated by Hayley's mischievous efforts
has already been shown. That the glowing eulogium pronounced by Flaxman
upon his friend's productions will be endorsed by modern critics is
hardly to be expected. Indeed, the characteristics upon which Flaxman
especially dwells as worthy of the highest praise will be rather
accounted as defects in the present day. The severe imitation of the
antique; the artificial simplicity of composition; the bare background;
the bas-relief style of treatment; the pseudo-purity which rejected
natural feeling and action in favour of a conventionally ideal
expression--these were precious gifts in Flaxman's eyes; to modern
artists they will appear rather errors of judgment pertaining to a past
school of art: false fashions which the present generation of painters
have happily outgrown and abandoned. At the same time, however, it
should not be forgotten that the majority of Romney's works of this
class will bear comparison with the best productions of his
contemporaries, and that some of them evince in a remarkable degree his
grace of manner, skill in expression, and loftiness of aim.
As a portrait painter Romney will be more prized and remembered,
although it is not likely that any existing connoisseurs will be found
to proclaim themselves with Lord Thurlow, of 'the Romney faction,' as
opposed to the school of Reynolds. In contrasting the works of the rival
painters, it is easy to see that however close a race for fame they
seemed to be running in their own time, there exists in truth a wide
distance between the president of the Academy and 'the man in Cavendish
Square.' It is not only that Romney had not the variety of Reynolds;
that he could not give to portrait painting the new life with which
Reynolds had so happily invested it:--he did not hit character nearly so
well; he could not endow his sitters with the air of repose, ease, and
elegance peculiar to the Reynolds portraits; he failed to give interest
to his backgrounds, generally too near and flat, and heavily painted;
and he had not Sir Joshua's success in subduing the eccentricities of
costume of the day, and bestowing a certain grace and beauty upon even
the most exuberant capes, cuffs, ruffles, wigs, cravats, and frills,
prevalent a century ago. There is an air of _fashion_ about many of
Romney's portraits as opposed to the look of _nobility_, which is the
especial attribute of Reynolds's pictures. In contemplating a Sir Joshua
there will be found a propriety, an integrity about the work which
effectually prevents all thought of the parts played by the tailor or
the milliner at the toilet of the sitter. This is not always the case
with Romney's portraits; pattern, and cut, and vogue do not fail to
assert themselves. In colour Romney is very unequal; in his own day it
was notoriously inferior to Reynolds's, though in spite of some
instances of chalkiness and thinness, generally rich, pure, and
lustrous. But the President's recourse to meretricious methods of
obtaining beauty of tint has ruined the majority of his works, rendering
their glories fleeting as photographs. Romney prudently adhered to a
safer manner. Many of his pictures can even now be hardly less fresh and
glowing in colour than when they first left his easel. His carnations
and flesh tints are often singularly fine. His small portraits possess
dignity, with force and manliness, however, rather than absolute ease or
refinement. But his chief success was in his female heads. In quick and
distinct appreciation of beauty he was not behind Reynolds; while,
occasionally, he attained a certain poetic height of expression it would
be difficult to parallel among Sir Joshua's works.
The fluctuation in fame which Romney has suffered has, of course, fallen
to the fate of many of his professional brethren. We read, for instance,
that Sir Godfrey Kneller sometimes received in payment for a portrait a
considerable sum in hard cash, with a couple of Rembrandt's thrown in by
way of makeweight. Yet now a single specimen of Rembrandt exceeds in
value a whole gallery of Knellers. And Rembrandt died insolvent, while
Sir Godfrey amassed a fortune! No one will dispute the justice of the
reversal of judgment which has taken place; the elevation of Rembrandt
at the expense of Kneller. But it may be a question whether George
Romney has not been unfairly abased, even though it may be agreed on all
hands that Sir Joshua Reynolds has not been unduly exalted. Possibly,
however, when a man rises or is lifted up to a high pitch of celebrity,
it is inevitable that he should in some degree mount upon the prostrate
and degraded reputations of his contemporaries.