R O M N E Y

BY
RANDALL DAVIES


CONTAINING SIXTEEN EXAMPLES IN COLOUR
OF THE MASTER’S WORK


LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1914


PRINTED AT
THE BALLANTYNE PRESS
LONDON

PREFACE

In the Louisa, Countess of Mansfield, we are nearer to the very best; but that is only a temporary loan, and until the public are in possession of one or two of his superb whole-length portraits, such as Earl Crewe’s Lady Milnes, the Marquis of Lansdowne’s Lord Henry Petty, or the Lady Bell Hamilton, they will hardly be able to judge the work of Romney as fairly as that of his more fortunate contemporaries.

In placing him in the first rank of English painters, however, the present generation are only doing him as much honour as he deserves, after a century of neglect; and there seems to be no fear of his fame diminishing again or his popularity abating.

R. D.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

GEORGE   ROMNEY

That Reynolds and Gainsborough were the two greatest portrait painters in England during the latter half of the eighteenth century is a proposition which no one is likely to question. Both had qualities which raised them far above the general, and considerably higher than even the foremost of their competitors; and though preference for the work of the one or the other of them is often as much a matter of taste as of opinion, the pre-eminence of the two is beyond dispute.

When we come to fill the third place, however, the question is not so readily settled. There are many candidates who are, or ought to be, in the running; and although the fashion of the present time may send up the prices of now one now another beyond all that is reasonable and sensible, it would be rash to say that the most popular has the best right to the position. Only last year, for example, a new planet swam into the dealers’ ken, a portrait of Benjamin Franklin, painted in 1762 by Mason Chamberlin, one of the original members of the Royal Academy, realising the extraordinary figure of two thousand eight hundred guineas; a figure which, as the Times felicitously observes, “places the artist on an auction level with Reynolds and Gainsborough.”

Judged by the fickle standard of the auction room, Raeburn, at the present moment, would have precedence over Hoppner, and Hoppner, unless I am mistaken, over Romney. But who can say whether before another season is over, the merits of Lawrence or Beechey, West or Copley, may not come up in the market, and impress an uncritical public with ideas of beauty and genius which have hitherto escaped their notice?

In my own opinion, George Romney has better claim than any of the others to be considered next to Reynolds and Gainsborough as a portrait painter, inasmuch as he seems to me to have exhibited more consistently the variety of qualities necessary for excellence in that particular branch of his art.

In its outward manipulation of charm and beauty, the work of Romney is all that an amateur need ask of it, and considerations of mere elegance have probably advanced his popularity in the sale room as much as others more really important. But charm and beauty of this sort are delusive guides and, unless backed by some more enduring test of excellence, will lead us downwards only, through the scale of Hoppner, Lawrence, Harlow, and Shee, till we find ourselves in the company of the simpering beauties of the early and mid-Victorian age, with their sloping shoulders and curling ringlets. With Romney we are perfectly safe. No twinge of conscience warns us to withstand the allurements of Lady Hamilton, or the fascination of the Parson’s Daughter. We may flirt as long and as desperately as we please—in an artistic sense—with Mrs. Mark Currie, without the slightest stain on our æsthetic morals. There is nothing technically meretricious about any of these beauties, and the virtue of our taste is only strengthened by the pleasurable enjoyment of their society.

And why?

One of the first reasons that occur to me is one that may possibly be challenged as being merely paradoxical; namely, that Romney, like Reynolds and Gainsborough, was not primarily a portrait painter. That all three of them became painters of portraits, and will go down to posterity as such, was not because they wished to, but by the accident of circumstance. Reynolds was an humble and assiduous disciple of Michel Angelo, an earnest seeker after conquests in “the grand style.” Of Gainsborough, it was said that music was his pleasure and painting his profession; while in that profession, as we know, it was landscape which chiefly occupied his mind and most delighted him. And Romney actually writes to his friend Hayley, “This cursed portrait-painting. How I am shackled with it!”

To explain the paradox we must look back a little into the history of painting in England, with a glance

at that of portrait-painting in other countries besides. Taking the latter view first, we find that the only name, which readily occurs to us, of an artist who painted nothing but portraits, is that of Holbein. In all the greatest schools of painting, since the days of Cimabue, portraiture was, as it were, a “bye-product,” and with a few exceptions like Holbein, Velasquez, or Vandyck, there is no great painter who is as well known for his portraits as for his other works. In England, until the arrival of Reynolds, there was no school of painting at all, and the only reason for any painter coming to England was the business, rather than the art, of making likenesses of its vigorous inhabitants. In England, consequently, when a school of painting was at last established, it is hardly surprising to find that the painting of portraits was the most considerable branch of it, not only in the early days of its commencement, but throughout almost the whole of its development; and it was not until comparatively late in its history that landscape assumed considerable proportions and finally outgrew the other branch.

Had Reynolds and Romney, like Gainsborough, been landscape painters at heart, it is probable that such a combination of great talent would have resulted in a much earlier triumph for the landscapist, and that we should not have had to wait for Turner and Constable to restore the balance. For Richard Wilson, the actual founder of the English School of landscape, only failed to establish it from want of recognition, and there were many others who were fit to achieve great works in landscape if it had not been that they were compelled to comply with the popular demand for portraiture without regard to their artistic inclinations.

But there was a third branch of the art on which, though unheeded alike by the patron and the public, the minds of Romney and of many more of the most accomplished artists of the time were bent, namely, the historical; and so long as the market was closed to their achievements in this direction, it was impossible for even the greatest among them to exist without making portraiture their regular business.

Reynolds was wise, or fortunate, enough to satisfy his historical or classical aspirations by working them in, so to speak, with his portraits; and while his purely allegorical or poetical compositions have added little to his reputation, he is never so great, or so attractive, as when painting portraits in terms of romance. Nor is he less deservedly popular when realising some idyllic fancy like The Age of Innocence, or The Strawberry Girl, The Infant Samuel or Robinetta—all of which are, in fact, portraits of a single model. Benjamin West, on the other hand, though fortunate in obtaining Royal approval, and truly royal payment, for his historical compositions, found little encouragement from the public in taking to this branch of the profession. “As any attempt in history was at that period an almost unexampled effort,” wrote James Northcote, R.A., on the exhibition of West’s Pylades and Orestes at the Exhibition of 1766, “this picture became a matter of much surprise. West’s house was soon filled with visitors from all quarters to see it; and those amongst the highest rank who were not able to come to his house to satisfy their curiosity, desired to have his permission to have it sent to them; nor did they fail, every time it was returned to him, to accompany it with compliments of the highest commendation on its great merits. But the most wonderful part of the story is that notwithstanding all this bustle and commendation bestowed upon this justly admired picture, by which Mr. West’s servant gained upwards of thirty pounds by showing it, yet no one mortal ever asked the price of the work, or so much as offered to give him a commission to paint any other subject. Indeed there was one gentleman who spoke of it with such praise to his father, that he immediately asked him the reason he did not purchase, as he so much admired it, when he answered, ‘What could I do if I had it? You surely would not have me hang up a modern English picture in my house unless it was a portrait?’ ”

It was in this year that John Singleton Copley exhibited his first picture, a boy with a squirrel, in England. He, too, was obsessed with the

historical idea, and carried it so far that he is better known for his grand compositions, like the Death of Chatham, than for the many very excellent portraits he painted. Angelica Kauffmann is remembered only by her well-intentioned but rather boneless classical compositions; and Fuseli, so far as he is remembered at all, by his weird nightmare effects in historical pieces.

Broadly speaking, history was a thankless mistress to the painters, and had it not been that Romney chose to paint portraits for the sake of accumulating enough money for the pursuit of his own artistic ambitions, his reputation as an artist would now be as totally forgotten as are those of many whose names it is almost unfair to them to mention in the present unappreciative days.

But there is fortunately another aspect of the question. A great deal is being said at the present time about the merits and demerits of a classical education for boys. On the one hand we hear that it is perfectly useless for the ordinary youth to spend the greater part of his time at school in the generally hopeless effort of acquiring some familiarity with the classical languages. On the other we are told that a boy must learn something, and that the training to the mind afforded by the study of Latin and Greek is more valuable in after life than the acquisition of any practically useful knowledge. Whichever side we may incline to in the case of the ordinary everyday boy who is to be sent out into the world to make his living in one of a dozen or more different walks of life, there can be no question that the whole-hearted pursuit of a beloved study, whether of Greek or Latin or Chinese, by a man of purpose and character, never fails to improve him in any other study which he may wish to undertake. For the higher walks of life, such as statesmanship, or the control of large interests, or the influence of considerable bodies of opinion, it is generally admitted that the school and university training is advantageous. An archbishop is not in these days required to address Convocation in Latin, nor is a Prime Minister expected to quote Horace in debate. But either can delegate the useful duties of life to others, while they themselves are better fitted by breadth of view to deal in the largest possible manner with public questions. It is for this reason, to return to our paradox, that I consider Romney’s excellence in portraiture was due, in a large measure, to the fact that he was not willingly a portrait painter. When we see that Reynolds came back from Italy filled with the ardour inspired by Michel Angelo and Raphael for great painting; when we see Gainsborough, torn from his beloved woods and fields to the painting room, both of them establishing their reputation with practically nothing but portraiture, I hope that the paradox will seem less paradoxical, and that it will be agreed that Romney, too, struggling to the last with the relentless Muse of his historical fancy, was in reality indebted to her for most of his excellence in the department of portraiture where we are ready to accord him so high a place. It is only another version of the old fable of the treasure which the father induced his boys to dig for in the vineyard. How many a fashionable painter would do well for himself and for his art by exchanging his brush for a spade!

Anybody can paint a portrait. It is really easier than taking a photograph. One has only to look at contemporary representations of the younger members of one’s friends’ families in oil or pastel to realise that the ordinary person prefers a bad picture to a good photograph. There is something gratifying to the latent vanity of the sitter in the mere fact of sitting to a painter. In the old days, when there were no such things as photographs, the inducement to sit must have been still greater, and the demand for portraits enormous. Horace Walpole declares that there were no less than two thousand portrait painters in London in the middle of the eighteenth century: modern investigation has accounted for over seven hundred! To be a portrait painter, clearly, then was not to be an artist; and when we come to sift the artists from the mere likeness-mongers, we shall almost invariably find that the only great portraits were the work of men who excelled in other directions, as we have found in the cases of Reynolds and Gainsborough.

Applying this test to Romney, it is quite surprising to discover how little is said of his portraiture

by his two earliest biographers, William Hayley, his life-long friend and admirer, and the Reverend John Romney, his son. Nor is there very much more, and certainly no indication of his present pre-eminence among the British portrait painters, in Allan Cunningham’s lengthy Memoir of him published in 1832. It is true that his popularity, amounting to serious rivalry of Reynolds at one period, is mentioned incidentally; as is also the devotion of his art to Lady Hamilton. But these are only considered as diversions, as it were, of his main purpose into a side channel. The dream of his life, we are to understand, was the achievement of historical compositions.

Certainly he has been unfortunate in his biographers. A more tedious and pretentious compilation than the quarto of over four hundred pages published by William Hayley in 1809 as “The Life of George Romney, Esq.,” I hope it may never be anybody’s fate to peruse. Hayley was a second-rate poet—his most considerable work being “The Triumphs of Temper”—with a third-rate intellect. “The influence which the friendship of Hayley exercised over the life of Romney,” the son of the artist writes, “was in many respects injurious. His friendship was grounded on selfishness, and the means by which he obtained it was flattery. He was able also by a canting kind of hypocrisy to confound the distinctions between vice and virtue, and to give a colouring to conduct that might and probably did mislead Romney on some occasions. He drew him too much from general society, and almost monopolised him to himself, and thus narrowed the circle of his acquaintance and friends. By having intimated an intention of writing Romney’s Life he made him extremely afraid of doing anything that might give offence. He was always interfering in his affairs—volunteering his advice; and I have much reason to believe that whatever errors the latter may have committed, they were simply owing to the counsel or instigation of Hayley.”

From Hayley, then, we need not expect very much that is likely to be of value in the way of criticism. But for one thing he is to be thanked, namely the inclusion in his volume of a short sketch of Romney’s professional career by John Flaxman, R.A. From this I shall have occasion to borrow more than a few illuminating passages, a couple of which I now adduce as evidence of how little Romney’s portraiture was considered in an estimate of his art specially written at the time of his death by one whom Hayley calls “an approved artist”:

“As Romney was gifted with peculiar powers for historical and ideal painting, so his heart and soul were engaged in the pursuit of it, whenever he could extricate himself from the importunate business of portrait painting. It was his delight by day and study by night, and for this his food and rest were often neglected.” And again, by way of summing up, “A peculiar shyness of disposition kept him from all association with public bodies, and led to the pursuit of his studies in retirement and solitude which ... allowed him more leisure for observation, reflection, and trying his skill in other arts connected with his own. And indeed few artists, since the fifteenth century, have been able to do so much in so many different branches; for besides his beautiful compositions and pictures, which have added to the knowledge and celebrity of the English school, he modelled like a sculptor, carved ornaments in wood with great delicacy, and could make an architectural design in a fine taste, as well as construct every part of the building.”

The word “portraits” it will be observed occurs but once in these passages; nor does it appear elsewhere in the sketch. If then it be admitted that neither Reynolds nor Gainsborough nor Romney were primarily portrait painters, and that their pre-eminence arises in a high degree from this cause, we shall have arrived at a standpoint from which to observe how each of the three was influenced by that cause in a different manner, and so obtain a better idea of their several excellences than we are likely to obtain from their “auction values.”

In the first place, it is to be remembered that neither Reynolds nor Gainsborough was actually averse to painting portraits, whereas we have

Romney’s written word that he hated it. Sir Joshua, to be sure, speaks of his charming little Strawberry Girl as “One of the half-dozen original things that no man ever exceeds in his lifetime.” But he was quite content to receive as many as a hundred-and-fifty sitters in the course of a single year. Gainsborough, too, could go off into raptures at the beauties of the young princes and princesses when he was painting them at Winsdor, and write a flaming letter to the Royal Academy when the royal portraits were not hung as he desired. Both found their highest expression in portraiture, as did Romney; but whereas they were not slow to realise that their respective gifts, widely different as they were, fitted them pre-eminently for this sort of work, it would seem that Romney never realised it at all; and while the other two brought all their forces, consciously, to the beautification of this particular branch of their art, Romney appears to have done no more than acquiesce coldly but, be it observed, conscientiously, in the necessity for it.

I would therefore submit that the chief characteristics which distinguish Romney’s portraits from those of his two greater contemporaries are coldness—or rather simplicity—and conscientiousness. These are conscious qualities, to which I would add a third, which I believe to be unconscious, that is to say, the influence of the classical art of the Greeks, which for the sake of brevity I will call classicism.

The distinction it seems to me is this. That whereas Reynolds was aiming at the grand style, and spared no occasion for employing it in practice and expatiating on it in precept, it is impossible to say that he did not consciously apply its principles—I say consciously—to every portrait he ever undertook. In Gainsborough’s portraits again we recognise the hand and the heart of the landscape painter consciously employing the terms of his favourite craft, when we find in them the same charm, the same natural and easy grace which is the great characteristic of his landscape drawings and sketches. While Reynolds was painting men and women in terms of art, Gainsborough was painting them in terms of nature. Both were applying all the principles which they had imbibed from their earliest youth to the particular object on which they were engaged.

With Romney, on the other hand, this was clearly not the case. He detested having to paint portraits. His mind was wholly attracted to allegorical and poetical subjects. Allan Cunningham, writing in 1832, almost apologises for mentioning his portraits at all. “A list of all the works which Romney executed in those busy days,” he writes, “would occupy several pages; it would, however, be absurd to specify many of them, since they can possess little interest except for particular families.” He then gives a list of eighteen portraits which are “remarkable for containing more than one figure, or for their superior merit, or on account of the character and station of the individual represented,” adding that “in one of these lucky and prosperous years he earned by portraiture alone some three thousand six hundred pounds.”

Now if Romney had called upon his Muse to assist him in his portraiture, as did Reynolds and Gainsborough, there can be little doubt that his popularity would have extended enormously, and that his reputation would have been increased in hardly a less degree. But whether it was the influence of Hayley, or whether, as is more probable, it was the effect of his character and his deep feeling for his art, Romney rarely, if ever, permitted his Muse to descend into his painting-room when he was executing a commission for a portrait. An honest presentment of his sitters was apparently his only concern; he took their money, and he conscientiously painted their portraits, in their habits as they lived, without any conscious attempt at achieving more.

But in keeping his Muse thus apart, it must not be supposed that he succeeded in banishing her from his inmost self. Her influence is to be seen and felt in almost every portrait he painted. Rarely as she was allowed on the stage—as in the famous group of Lady Gower and her Children—she was ever present, though behind the scenes; how else can one account for the almost classical severity of tone that keeps every portrait of Romney’s, however simple, from being merely trivial, pretty, or banal?

An alternative explanation of the reticence and simplicity of Romney’s portraits, his seeming unwillingness to expand into allegorical portraiture, is his supposed sensitiveness of temperament. Hayley expatiates on this quality to such an extent as to shake our belief in its existence; but that it did exist in some degree is unfortunately too evident to deny. How much or how little it had to do with the limitation of his fancy in portraiture must only be a matter of opinion, but since as good evidence of it as any is to be found in the story of three of his earliest pictures, we may as well consider it before proceeding further.

Almost the first of Romney’s “popular successes” was a family piece containing portraits of Sir George Warren, his lady, and their little daughter, which was exhibited in 1769. “This picture was highly extolled by the public,” says John Romney, “and brought him still more into notice. According to a design in one of his sketch-books, Lady Warren is represented as seated in a graceful and easy posture, with a fronting attitude, but with her face slightly turned to her right, having her left elbow leaning upon a pedestal, and the hand extended over her daughter’s shoulder, a girl about six or seven years old, who is standing by her. The young lady has her hands gently crossed over her bosom, and is caressing a little bird which she holds in one hand. Sir George, habited in a picturesque style, is standing rather to the left, and somewhat more backward in the picture than his lady. He has his right arm moderately extended and is directing her attention to a distant object. The composition is beautiful, correct, and natural, and the simplicity, grace, and feeling expressed in the figure and character of Miss Warren are admirable.”

This description, it is to be observed, is not from the picture itself, which the writer had never seen, but from the artist’s drawing for it; and it is evident that the drawing must have been executed with much greater care and particularity than is to be found in most of Romney’s sketches. The picture itself is now in the possession of Lord Vernon, at Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire, the little daughter having married the

first Lord Vernon. Its present owner informed Mr. Humphry Ward that it was always supposed to be by Reynolds, and that a professional valuer valued it as such for probate in 1883.

That so successful an attempt should be repeated was only natural. Hogarth and Highmore had painted some of these “conversation pieces,” as they were called, but with indifferent, or at any rate no great amount of popular, success, and one might have supposed that a young artist would have been ready enough to respond to the encouragement accorded to him in this particular class of picture. But no others of the sort are known to have been attempted, with one exception. At about the same time Romney was engaged in a portrait group of Mr. Leigh and his family. Unfortunately, his well-wishing friend Cumberland, the dramatist, in his efforts to push Romney to the front, was ill-advised enough to drag Garrick to see his pictures. Now Garrick hated Cumberland, and had a very poor opinion of him—which is all there is to excuse him for an unpardonable exhibition of bad taste. “I brought him to see Romney’s pictures,” writes Cumberland, “hoping to interest him in his favour. A large family piece unluckily arrested his attention; a gentleman in a close-buckled bob-wig, and a scarlet waistcoat laced with gold, with his wife and children (some sitting, some standing), had taken possession of some yards of canvas, very much, as it appeared, to their own satisfaction—for they were perfectly amused in a contented abstinence from all thought or action. Upon this unfortunate group, when Garrick had fixed his lynx’s eyes, he began to put himself into the attitude of the gentleman, and turning to Mr. Romney, ‘Upon my word, Sir,’ he said, ‘this is a very regular well-ordered family; and that is a very bright-rubbed mahogany table at which that motherly good lady is sitting; and this worthy gentleman in the scarlet-waistcoat is doubtless a very excellent subject (to the State, I mean, if these are all his children), but not for your art, Mr. Romney, if you mean to pursue it with that success which I hope will attend you.’ The modest artist took the hint, as it was meant, in good part, and turned his family with their faces to the wall.”

If Romney had been only moderately sensitive we can easily understand that an impertinence of this sort (for Cumberland was as dense as he was well-meaning in thinking it was intended in good part) would have been intolerable from anybody; but when we remember that Garrick was an intimate friend of Reynolds, we may readily admit that it had in fact a certain influence on Romney’s choice of subject and treatment. We have seen that in the other group his success was the result of careful and prepared study; but I know of no other sketches of his for family groups—except those for the Gower picture—though there are plenty of studies of single figures.

A couple of years later, again, he painted the actress Mrs. Yates in the character of the Tragic Muse, at whole length. This was twelve years or more before Sir Joshua painted his famous picture of Mrs. Siddons, so that it is hardly possible to compare the two. But Romney’s picture cannot have proved more than a succès d’estime. “I have often wished,” says Hayley, “that it had been the lot of Romney to paint this great actress, one of the most gracefully majestic of our tragic queens, at a maturer season of her life, and in the full meridian of his power; for in that case I am persuaded the Tragic Muse of Romney would not have appeared what at present I must allow her to be, very far inferior, as a work of the pencil, to the Tragic Muse of Sir Joshua.” For once we may take Hayley’s opinion as more or less correct, for although I am unable to pronounce on the merits of the picture, not having seen it, its history records what was the popular estimate of it. It was purchased by Alderman Boydell, and put up to auction at Christie’s after his death in 1810, when it was bought in for nine and a half guineas. In 1812 it was put up again and there was no bid, and the same in 1817 and 1822. In 1824 it at last found a purchaser at £10.

As this was, according to John Romney, his first whole length portrait of a lady, it would seem probable that he did not receive sufficient encouragement to pursue the allegorical treatment of portrait subjects.

But whether we incline to the one view or the other, or perhaps accept a commixture of the two in

such proportions as may seem to each of us most suitable to the facts, we find it to be true that from henceforth Romney’s sitters were treated as ordinary everyday human beings, and not as gods, goddesses, heroes, nymphs, muses, or what not. What he gave them was of his best, so far as it went, and, as I have suggested, his best went farther than he was conscious of in giving it. Let us now see how his portraiture responds to the three tests I ventured to suggest, namely, simplicity, conscientiousness, and classicism.

First, then, as to simplicity, by which I mean in this connection simplicity of presentment—the plain prosaic record on canvas of the likeness of the sitter. When we come to consider the third point, classicism, we shall see that this simplicity extends to every particular; but for the moment I am only considering the first question that arises when a commission for a portrait is given—“How would you like to be painted?” In Romney’s studio there seems to have been but one answer, namely, “Exactly as I am.” Of accessories there were practically none. The portrait was painted and that was all. A portrait by Romney is first and foremost a portrait.

Secondly, his conscientiousness. Who would believe, on a view of any of Romney’s portraits, that he looked upon portraiture as a cursed occupation by which he was shackled? Is there any trace of unwillingness, of haste, of slovenliness? Is there any hint that he was out of temper with his sitters, or careless in the way he posed them, or indifferent to the perfection of his painting? We may miss the animation of Gainsborough, or the triumphant glitter of Reynolds in many of his sober contemplative faces, but of the perfunctory conventionalisms of his contemporaries or the slipshod hurry and make-believe of the modern exhibitors we find no suggestion. Whatever he did was done with all his strength, if not with all his heart, and no one could complain that his portrait suffered from want of painstaking devotion to the subject. His care and conscientiousness are as easily seen, too, in his most busy and prosperous days as they are in his earliest