George Romney

George Romney was a Cumberland lad, born in 1734, of parents who were in humble circumstances living at Dalton in the Fells.

His father was an ingenious man who lived on his own farm as a yeoman, but who followed also the pursuits of a joiner and cabinet-maker, and who was one of the first persons in the north to see and make use of the newly imported wood mahogany, from which he made a chest of drawers out of a sailor's chest brought from the West Indies.

Romney inherited much of his father's ingenuity, and as a lad set about making a fiddle, which he completed in later years and retained all his life. It was a sound instrument of really good tone, and the artist himself played well upon it.

As a lad Romney was sent to a small local school; but he made very slight progress with his studies, and preferred to spend his time in sketching or in copying the pictures that he found in papers or books.

His father, finding that he was making so little progress, took him away from school before he was eleven, and placed him in his own workshop, where he soon began to learn how to ply the tools and to make a creditable use of his new accomplishment.

Still, however, his spare time was filled up by painting, and he made very careful copies of the illustrations in a monthly magazine which one of his father's workmen, who boarded in the house, lent him regularly as it appeared.

He was also asked by a person in the village to paint her portrait, and succeeded in performing the commission in so creditable a way, that it was quite clear to the elder Romney that his son was intended by nature to be an artist.

Accordingly, yielding to the persuasions of the lad himself, backed up as they were by those of many friends, he took steps to apprentice him to an itinerant painter, who was at that time in their neighbourhood, named Steele.

Here he was employed in the more menial work of the craft, grinding colours and preparing the palette; but Steele, although a poor painter himself, had been well trained in Paris, and was able to teach his young pupil much that was of the greatest use to him in his after career.

Steele afterwards eloped with a young lady who was one of his pupils, and Romney had to assist him in his arrangements. They were difficult, and involved a vast amount of trouble and exposure to night air at a time when the youth was far from strong; and after the gay couple had escaped to Gretna Green, Romney fell ill of a fever, and was nursed by a domestic servant named Mary Abbott. With this young person the artist fell violently in love, and on recovering from his illness married her on October 14th, 1756, when only twenty-two years old, and without any means of his own on which to live.

He had to leave his wife very soon after marriage, as Steele had gone to York, where he expected Romney to join him; but after a while the roving life that his master led, and his improvident habits and constant difficulties as to money, disheartened Romney, and he agreed with Steele that, if he would cancel his indenture, Romney would forgive him a debt that he had incurred of £10 from the young apprentice.

This course was adopted, and Romney returned to Kendal, where his wife had been residing.

Here he commenced his own work as a portrait-painter, and from at first painting signboards he soon became known as a clever worker, and was employed by the persons of quality in the neighbourhood to paint their portraits.

Many of the neighbouring landowners employed him, and at this time the artist set about painting historical scenes also and landscapes, in order to turn his time to profitable account. Many of these he sold at Kendal Town Hall by a system of lottery that was then very popular.

By such work the young couple were enabled to save £100, and with some of this money Romney determined to make his way up to London, as he felt that the limited scope that he had in the north was cramping his powers and that he was capable of greater things.

He had but two children, a son and a little daughter, and his wife, who loved him profoundly, was quite prepared to sacrifice herself in order that her husband might prosper. Therefore, taking with him but £30 of their joint savings, and leaving the remainder for her and the children, Romney left his native county for the great and distant city on March 14th, 1762.

The little daughter whom he left behind him died in the following year, and Mrs. Romney, with her son, removed to the house of her father-in-law, John Romney, with whom she continued to live.

During the whole time of his sojourn in London, which, with the exception of brief visits in 1767 and 1779, lasted till 1799, Romney appears to have continued on terms of the closest affection with his wife, and to have remitted to her constantly such sums of money as she required; but he never brought her up to London, and, as has been stated, only visited her in Kendal twice during the thirty-seven years which he spent in London.

This is the incident in the life of the artist upon which much stress has been laid by malevolent writers, and hard things have been said without number about Romney for his so-called desertion of his wife.

It must be remembered, however, that Romney's son and biographer does not say any hard things about his father in this matter, nor does he upbraid him for leaving his wife far away in the Fells. Mrs. Romney did not write letters of expostulation to her husband, or demand that she should be brought up to London; and when her husband returned to her as an invalid, she received him lovingly and nursed him with great devotion till his death. She in no way suffered pecuniary loss by his absence, as he regularly sent sums of money to her; and when their son was old enough to come to town, Romney had him to his house, treated him with the greatest affection, and took him about with him.

Surely it ill beseems those who consider the life of this gifted artist so to condemn his action, when those who were the ones best fitted to blame him specially abstained from doing so!

Mrs. Romney, be it remembered, came of very humble parentage, and was a homely person of but slight education. She appears to have had her own circle of friends in the places where she lived, to have been a person of simple tastes, not anxious to mix in the world of fashion or to receive its comments and its sneers. She would have been in all probability unhappy in London, have in no wise enjoyed the life that her husband lived, and have been an encumbrance to him and a clog on his progress; and Romney very possibly feared to expose her simplicity to the contempt of the people of fashion whom he met and whose portraits he painted.

She may have desired to avoid such society and have preferred her quiet at home, and it may have been a refinement of kindness on his part which led him to shelter her from the troubles which he knew would await her in London.

There is nothing which, with any degree of accuracy, can be stated against the moral character of Romney whilst he was away from her, and all such charges against him fall to the ground by reason of the absence of proof, and it seems clear that it was no such cause that kept him from sending for his wife. Even the reports as to Romney and Lady Hamilton, to which reference is made in a succeeding chapter, are gainsaid by the letters of Lady Hamilton herself which are in the Morrison collection, and no one has ever been able to produce one single piece of evidence in support of the statements that have been too wildly made. Mrs. Romney from the very first showed her deep attachment to her husband by sacrificing herself for his advancement; and she continued, as her letters show, throughout her life, to act in the same way for him, and to give him her deepest and tenderest affection: and we are therefore justified in accepting as normal a state of affairs as to which the chief persons concerned made no complaint, and in declining to attribute to the artist any unworthy motives for his conduct.

Romney did not come to London provided with references or introductions, nor with much money, and the consequence was that for the first ten years of his life in town it was a struggle for him to do any more than keep himself and remit small sums to his wife in Kendal.

He seems to have known only two persons in London, neither of whom was in a position to do much to assist him.

His first important effort proved a disappointment to him in its result. He competed for a premium offered by the Society of Arts, and his picture of The Death of General Wolfe, sent in 1763, received the second prize of fifty guineas. Later on, however, it was stated that the picture was not painted at all by this unknown artist, but by someone else, and that a fraud had been practised; and then, when that was disproved, the costume of the picture, which was not the usual one adopted at the time, was objected to; and it was further claimed that the event was not strictly historical, having only so recently happened. The prize was accordingly taken away from Romney; but, in consideration of the merits of the work, an ex-gratia payment was made to the artist by the Council of the Society of twenty-five guineas. The leading artists of the day had in this way given a slight to this new-comer which he never in after years forgot.

Whether, as has been stated, Sir Joshua Reynolds was at the head of this movement to crush the young artist we cannot tell; but it seems likely that the bitter jealousy which existed between the two men in after years, and which Reynolds never lost an opportunity of increasing, took its rise at this time, and certain it is that Reynolds hated to hear Romney praised, and was ever ready to say and do things that would annoy and irritate his rival.

Romney had always been convinced that the study of the great artists of the Continent was needful for him before he would be able to accomplish what he felt was within him, and he made every effort to get to Italy in order to study the Old Masters.

At this time he was unable to accomplish his cherished desire for want of funds, but he saved all that he could, and contented himself with a journey to Paris.

Here he copied all the works that appealed strongly to him, and spent every hour of his time in visiting galleries and churches and feasting his eyes on the treasures which they contained. His acquaintance with Vernet was of great service to him at this issue.

On his return to London after some seven weeks' absence he again set valiantly to work, and in 1765 carried off a premium from the Society of Arts of fifty guineas against all his competitors.

Then, in 1767, he went down to see his wife, and when he returned to London he brought with him his brother Peter, hoping to be able to assist him in some measure. Peter was not, however, steady or industrious, and, although he sat to his cleverer brother more than once, he did not remain with him long, but drifted away and eventually settled down to a more or less precarious life in Manchester.