Romney

by Randall Davies

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.