ELIZABETH, COUNTESS-DUCHESS OF SUTHERLAND.
He now became the serious rival of Reynolds, who spoke of him in slighting manner as "the man in Cavendish Square," pretending, with studied insult, to have entirely forgotten his name.
All the world of fashion and wealth sat to the artist, and his list of portraits reads like a page from the fashionable gazette of the day, including as it does all the persons who were then well known in town and who constituted the cream of society.
The opportunity now arose for Romney to show how indifferent he was to the slights and contempt of his fellow-artists who ranged themselves around Sir Joshua.
The Royal Academy had at this time sprung into being, and its members desired to include all the chief artists in their ranks, and to show that those outside their membership were not worthy of attention. All their efforts, however, to include the name of the most fashionable artist of the time, or to hang his pictures on the walls of the exhibition, were in vain.
Romney was begged by his great friend Jeremiah Meyer, one of the leading miniature-painters and an original member of the new Academy, to come within its shelter. He was also approached by Mrs. Moser, by Humphrey, and by Angelica Kauffmann, all of whom desired him to exhibit his works. But it was in vain, and never did Romney send a single picture to the exhibitions of the Royal Academy. He completely ignored it, would not suffer it to be mentioned in his presence, considered that it was not worthy of any recognition, and went on painting pictures of all the loveliest women of society, but declining to allow a single one of them to be shown in the exhibitions of the Academy.
This determination was partly dictated, no doubt, by modesty, as there is every evidence that Romney was a modest, retiring, shy man, and even at the very zenith of his fame was not found in the brilliant society in which the President delighted. He was fond of his home and of his son, and was not a gay but a quiet man; but there is little doubt that his refusal to share in the glories of the Academy was also partly the result of his wish to show to those who had been bitter and who were still jealous of his fame that he was quite able to stand alone, and did not require the aid of any Academy to render his works popular or to enhance his fame.
The determination cost him the patronage of the Court and of a certain select group of persons who followed the lead of the King and did not select for themselves, but it is probable that in the long run the artist did not really suffer thereby.
He was a self-respecting and unassuming man at all times, and was not in the habit of forcing his way into any society or of appealing for commissions from his friends.
No flattery escaped his lips, no adulation of those who could assist him by their introductions and so render him the aid which he required; and in all these ways he was the reverse of those who were around him, and who used every artifice to bring themselves into popular notice and shrank from no ignoble effort to obtain patronage.