Romney

by Randall Davies

Secondly, his conscientiousness. Who would believe, on a view of any of Romney’s portraits, that he looked upon portraiture as a cursed occupation by which he was shackled? Is there any trace of unwillingness, of haste, of slovenliness? Is there any hint that he was out of temper with his sitters, or careless in the way he posed them, or indifferent to the perfection of his painting? We may miss the animation of Gainsborough, or the triumphant glitter of Reynolds in many of his sober contemplative faces, but of the perfunctory conventionalisms of his contemporaries or the slipshod hurry and make-believe of the modern exhibitors we find no suggestion. Whatever he did was done with all his strength, if not with all his heart, and no one could complain that his portrait suffered from want of painstaking devotion to the subject. His care and conscientiousness are as easily seen, too, in his most busy and prosperous days as they are in his earliest

portraits, like that of Mr. and Mrs. Lindow, which was painted in 1760 before he left Lancaster.

John Romney records an amusing instance of his father’s efforts in this respect. “I remember his telling me once,” he writes, “what difficulty he had with a sitter in order to accomplish a little expression. The gentleman was from the country, and an attorney; and though his profession required intelligence, yet his countenance gave no indication of it. To remove a settled dulness that pervaded his features, Mr. Romney made many attempts, starting every popular topic of conversation, but all in vain; at length by some uncommon chance, he happened to mention hunting; at the sound of which word a ray of animation immediately sparkled in the eyes of the sitter, and imparted a certain degree of vivacity to his countenance. Mr. Romney took his measure accordingly, and led him into the subject; after which he was relieved from any further attempts at conversation as the worthy gentleman expatiated upon it with spirit until the picture was finished.”

“Even upon persons to whom nature was less parsimonious of her favours,” he adds, “he knew that dulness would sometimes intrude, and, therefore, always wished that some friends should accompany his sitters, both for the purpose already mentioned, and also to relieve himself of the double task of painting and of keeping up a forced conversation at the same time.”

Lastly, for his classicism, which is the really distinguishing characteristic of Romney’s portraits and includes in it all the others. “On his arrival in Italy,” Flaxman tells us, “he was witness to new scenes of art, and sources of study ... he there contemplated the purity and perfection of ancient sculpture, the sublimity of Michel Angelo’s Sistine chapel, and the simplicity of Cimabue’s and Giotto’s schools. He perceived these qualities [namely, be it observed, sublimity and simplicity] distinctly, and judiciously used them in viewing and imitating nature; and thus his quick perception and unwearied application enabled him by a two years’ residence abroad to acquire as great a proficiency in art as is usually attained by foreign studies of much longer duration.” And again, “His cartoons ... were examples of the sublime and terrible at that time perfectly new in English art. The Dream of Atossa, from the Persians of Æschylus, contrasted the death-like sleep of the Queen with the Bacchanalian Fury of the Genius of Greece. The composition was conducted with the fire and severity of a Greek bas-relief.”

How many of the thousands of visitors to the National Gallery would ever imagine that this last paragraph was written of the painter of The Parson’s Daughter, or Mrs. Mark Currie? And yet here, I cannot help feeling, is the real strength which underlies the structure of even the airiest of Romney’s paintings. The roots of genius must grow deep if its branches are to grow high. The foundations of a great building must be firm. The faintest breeze of enlightened judgment is enough to blow away the ornamental bungalows of the Victorian portrait-painters, while castle Romney stands as firm as the rock on which it was built.

“In trying to attain excellence in his art,” Flaxman continues, “his diligence was unceasing as his gratification in the employment. He endeavoured to combine all the possible advantages of the subject immediately before him, and to exclude whatever had a tendency to weaken it. His compositions, like those of the ancient pictures and basso-relievos, told their story by a single group of figures in the front, whilst the background is made the simplest possible, rejecting all unnecessary episode and trivial ornament, either of secondary groups or architectural subdivision. In his compositions the beholder was forcibly struck by the sentiment at the first glance, the gradations and varieties of which he traced through several characters all conceived in an elevated spirit of dignity and beauty, with a lively expression of nature in all the parts.”

Although written of his classical compositions, this criticism of Flaxman, who was himself more severely classical in his art than the Greeks, applies with almost equal truth to his portraits. It throws into light the hidden force that gives them their strength, that keeps them before us as live men and women instead of painted puppets and dolls.