In another letter, to Hayley in June 1791, he writes, “At present, and the greatest part of the summer, I shall be engaged in painting pictures from the divine lady. I cannot give her any other epithet, for I think her superior to all womankind. I have two pictures to paint of her for the Prince of Wales. She says she must see you.... She asked me if you would not write my life. I told her you had begun it. Then she said she hoped you would have much to say of her in the life, as she prided herself in being my model.” And again in the following month “I dedicate my time to this charming lady; there is a prospect of her leaving town with Sir William for two or three weeks. They are very much hurried at present, as everything is going on for their speedy marriage, and all the world following and talking of her, so that if she had not more good sense than vanity her brain must be turned.
“The pictures I have begun are Joan of Arc, a Magdalen, and a Bacchante, for the Prince of Wales,
and another I am to begin as a companion to the Bacchante. I am also to paint a picture of Constance for the Shakespeare Gallery.”
The extent of Romney’s obligations to her, simply as a model, may be gathered from a glance at Mr. Roberts’s Catalogue Raisonné of his work. Here we find forty-five different pictures of the fair Emma, a figure which is about doubled if we count the various versions painted of one and another—as a Bacchante, for example, no less than twelve separate canvases are enumerated. Nor does this catalogue probably include a good many sketches and studies which were left unfinished. Of the various characters in which he painted her, apart from pictures which were simply portraits, the list includes those of Alope, Ariadne, a Bacchante, Cassandra, Circe, Comedy, the Comic Muse, Contemplation, Euphrosyne, a Gipsy, Iphigenia, Joan of Arc, a Magdalen, Meditation, Miranda, Nature, a Nun, a Pythian Priestess, S. Cecilia, Sensibility, a Shepherdess, Sigismunda, the Spinstress. The Sempstress, it may be mentioned, was not painted from her, but from Miss Vernon.
Such a catalogue as this is, I suppose, unique in the annals of painting. Oddly enough it is paralleled in those of literature—if it be not thought too fanciful to quote the example of William Shakespeare. For fanciful as at first thought it may seem, it is, nevertheless, helpful to an understanding of the relations of the private life of each to his particular art.
George Romney, like Shakespeare, was born of humble parents in a remote country town. Dalton, in Lancashire, is further from London than Stratford, but as I do not pretend to draw the parallel too closely, I will confine myself to a short account of Romney’s circumstances only. He was born on December 15, 1734. His ancestors, yeomen of good repute, lived near Appleby, in Westmorland, but took refuge during the Civil Wars in the neighbouring county. His father was a joiner, which in those days included the trade of carpenter and cabinet-maker, and George was apprenticed to him. How and at what period the love of painting came upon him has not been clearly shown. Cumberland asserts that it was inspired by the cuts in the
