George Romney
1734 - 1802
George Romney was the dominant and most fashionable British artist of his generation, and right at the heart of British history, famously portraying Emma Lady Hamilton, in a series of famous portraits. Born in Dalton-in-Furness, then in the north of Lancashire, the son of a cabinet maker, Romney was apprenticed to a watchmaker and then to a local portraitist, Christopher Steele. Setting up his own portrait practice in Kendal, he decided to leave his wife and young son to seek an artistic career in London, sending money home to support his family. After the success of his history painting "The Death of General Wolfe at Quebec" at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1759, to the chagrin of the President, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Between 1763 and 1770/1, Romney recorded his development in a remarkable sketchbook of some 625 drawings, known as the Kendal Town Hall Sketchbook. The book traces the development of his portrait practice, and as an artist of classical and mythological subjects. Pages from another sketchbook, in the collection of Arnold Fellows, also relate to a number of the subjects seen in the Kendal book, and include this study of the two sisters. In 1769, Romney showed a picture of Sir George Warren and his family at the Free Society of Artists, for which studies appeared in the Fellows collection, underlining his position and demand for his services as a portrait painter. With a lifetime enmity between him and Reynolds, he was never invited to join the Academy. In
George Romney was the dominant and most fashionable British artist of his generation, and right at the heart of British history, famously portraying Emma Lady Hamilton, in a series of famous portraits. Born in Dalton-in-Furness, then in the north of Lancashire, the son of a cabinet maker, Romney was apprenticed to a watchmaker and then to a local portraitist, Christopher Steele. Setting up his own portrait practice in Kendal, he decided to leave his wife and young son to seek an artistic career in London, sending money home to support his family. After the success of his history painting "The Death of General Wolfe at Quebec" at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1759, to the chagrin of the President, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Between 1763 and 1770/1, Romney recorded his development in a remarkable sketchbook of some 625 drawings, known as the Kendal Town Hall Sketchbook. The book traces the development of his portrait practice, and as an artist of classical and mythological subjects. Pages from another sketchbook, in the collection of Arnold Fellows, also relate to a number of the subjects seen in the Kendal book, and include this study of the two sisters. In 1769, Romney showed a picture of Sir George Warren and his family at the Free Society of Artists, for which studies appeared in the Fellows collection, underlining his position and demand for his services as a portrait painter. With a lifetime enmity between him and Reynolds, he was never invited to join the Academy. In
1782, Romney met Emma Hamilton (then Hart), ending up painting more than 60 portraits of her in various poses, sometimes as a mythological or historical figure. In the last two years of his life, Romney returned, ill, to Kendal, where he was nursed by his wife, Mary.
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