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.