Looking at a fine Romney, such as "Mrs. Lee Acton," or "Mrs. Mark Currie," or "Lady Hamilton," with her left hand tucked beneath her chin, or the earlier painted Ramus girls, one feels that exquisiteness and simplicity of design can go no further; but pass from "Mrs. Mark Currie" to Raeburn's "Portrait of a Lady," hanging on the staircase of the National Gallery, from "Mrs. Lee Acton" to, say, Reynolds' "Nelly O'Brien" at Hertford House, or from Romney's "Mrs. Robinson" to Gainsborough's "Mrs. Robinson," and the superiority of Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Raeburn sounds out like a thunder-clap. Romney at his best is one of the glories of English portraiture, but in many of his multifarious portraits he is not at his best. Few painters are able to stand the test of a collected exhibition of their works, and it is no wonder that Romney did not emerge artistically scatheless from the Grafton Gallery ordeal of his collected works in 1900. The first impression was delightful. "Charming!" one murmured, but in the end monotony ruled, and, satisfactory as his clear colour often is, the Romney brick-dust red is not eternally agreeable. Yet through him Lady Hamilton and other delightful creatures have achieved immortality. We may criticise, belittle, and place him; but a fine Romney produces the elation of sudden sunshine, or the first sight in spring-time of a bank of primroses.
He had no recreations except his violin: his life was entirely devoted to his art. At Eartham, during his summer holiday, he worked incessantly. There, in "a riding-house of wood" converted into a studio, which "afforded him a walk of a hundred feet under cover," he "meditated" on the various pictures from Shakespeare that he meant to produce. In London, at the height of his prosperity, he worked till bedtime, occasionally when the days grew longer drinking tea at Kilburn Wells, or dining at the Long Room, Hampstead. Married early, he left his wife, as all the world knows, to seek fame in London at the age of twenty-eight, found it, enjoyed it, lost his health, became hypochondriac, and returned to his wife, at the age of sixty-five, a broken and shattered man. His biographers have censured or excused his marital conduct. Mary seems to have made no complaint. She knew George and understood him, knew that he had ceased to care for her, and that his art held, and would always hold, chief place in his affections. I am not tempted to play the part of moralist. Romney's niche in the Temple of Fame is as painter, not as husband. Tennyson treated the domestic side in his poem "Romney's Remorse." The painter, according to the bard—
"... made
The wife of wives a widow bride, and lost
Salvation for a sketch."
Edward Fitzgerald, a bachelor, observes in one of his letters: "When old, nearly mad, and quite desolate, he went back to her, and she received him and nursed him till he died. This quiet act of hers is worth all Romney's pictures; even as a matter of Art, I am sure."
Romney supported his wife, no great tax on a man who made nearly £4000 in one year, and he paid her two or three visits in the course of his triumphant career. The ugly part of the story is that he posed in London as a bachelor.
PLATE IV.—THE PARSON'S DAUGHTER: A Portrait.
(From the picture in the National Gallery)
This dainty portrait was called "The Parson's Daughter" by a former owner. Romney must have enjoyed the brief task of painting her. She gave him no trouble, you may be sure. Easily as a thrush sings he suggested the powdered hair framing the coquettish face masked in demureness, the long neck springing from the slight frame, and the note of green in the auburn curls.