Part 2

Now if Romney had called upon his Muse to assist him in his portraiture, as did Reynolds and Gainsborough, there can be little doubt that his popularity would have extended enormously, and that his reputation would have been increased in hardly a less degree. But whether it was the influence of Hayley, or whether, as is more probable, it was the effect of his character and his deep feeling for his art, Romney rarely, if ever, permitted his Muse to descend into his painting-room when he was executing a commission for a portrait. An honest presentment of his sitters was apparently his only concern; he took their money, and he conscientiously painted their portraits, in their habits as they lived, without any conscious attempt at achieving more.

But in keeping his Muse thus apart, it must not be supposed that he succeeded in banishing her from his inmost self. Her influence is to be seen and felt in almost every portrait he painted. Rarely as she was allowed on the stage--as in the famous group of _Lady Gower and her Children_--she was ever present, though behind the scenes; how else can one account for the almost classical severity of tone that keeps every portrait of Romney’s, however simple, from being merely trivial, pretty, or banal?

An alternative explanation of the reticence and simplicity of Romney’s portraits, his seeming unwillingness to expand into allegorical portraiture, is his supposed sensitiveness of temperament. Hayley expatiates on this quality to such an extent as to shake our belief in its existence; but that it did exist in some degree is unfortunately too evident to deny. How much or how little it had to do with the limitation of his fancy in portraiture must only be a matter of opinion, but since as good evidence of it as any is to be found in the story of three of his earliest pictures, we may as well consider it before proceeding further.

Almost the first of Romney’s “popular successes” was a family piece containing portraits of Sir George Warren, his lady, and their little daughter, which was exhibited in 1769. “This picture was highly extolled by the public,” says John Romney, “and brought him still more into notice. According to a design in one of his sketch-books, Lady Warren is represented as seated in a graceful and easy posture, with a fronting attitude, but with her face slightly turned to her right, having her left elbow leaning upon a pedestal, and the hand extended over her daughter’s shoulder, a girl about six or seven years old, who is standing by her. The young lady has her hands gently crossed over her bosom, and is caressing a little bird which she holds in one hand. Sir George, habited in a picturesque style, is standing rather to the left, and somewhat more backward in the picture than his lady. He has his right arm moderately extended and is directing her attention to a distant object. The composition is beautiful, correct, and natural, and the simplicity, grace, and feeling expressed in the figure and character of Miss Warren are admirable.”

This description, it is to be observed, is not from the picture itself, which the writer had never seen, but from the artist’s drawing for it; and it is evident that the drawing must have been executed with much greater care and particularity than is to be found in most of Romney’s sketches. The picture itself is now in the possession of Lord Vernon, at Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire, the little daughter having married the

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.

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.

“His heads were various,” says Flaxman, still on the classical compositions, but holding the light even more closely to the portraits, “the male were decided and grand, the female lovely. His figures resembled the antique; the limbs were elegant, and finely formed. His drapery was well understood, either forming the figure into a mass with one or two deep folds only, or by its adhesion and transparency discovering the form of the figure, the lines of which were finely varied with the union or expansion of spiral or cascade folds, composing with or contrasting the outline and chiaroscuro. He was so passionately fond of Greek sculpture that he had filled his study and galleries with fine casts from the most perfect statues, groups, basso-relievos and busts of antiquity. He would sit and consider these in profound silence by the hour; and besides the studies in drawing and painting he made from them, he would examine them under all the changes of sunlight and daylight; and with lamps prepared on purpose at night he would try their effects lighted from above, beneath, in all directions, with rapturous admiration.”

Before considering the particulars in which these observations may be said to be applicable to Romney’s portraits, it is perhaps worth pointing out that the essential difference between the work of Reynolds and Romney is to be traced back to the influence exerted on each of them by his studies in Italy. Reynolds, perhaps fortunately for British art at the time, seems to have taken Michel Angelo and Raphael as the founders of painting, and to have confined his study of art, accordingly, to them and their successors. Romney, on the other hand, while also regarding them as the chiefs, went back from them to the antique, taking Cimabue and Giotto on the way. That he particularly admired Correggio is stated by Hayley, but that Correggio’s “tenderness and grace he often emulated very happily in his figures of women and children” is a piece of criticism which I must confess to be beyond me. Certainly it cannot be applied to his portraits.

“His drapery was well understood,” says Flaxman; I need not quote the rest of the sentence, because it applies in particular to the drapery of ladies in the classic period; but in principle, the drapery of Romney’s sitters is as simple, because well understood, as that of Atossa. Of all painters of women surely there never was one who required such extreme simplicity of raiment. The plainest of white or black robes seem to have been the rule, and the most common exception to absolute simplicity was not in the garment at all, but in the addition of a somewhat elaborate and umbrageous hat. Of any pattern on the drapery, I can only recall one instance, namely, that of Miss Hannah Milnes, a three-quarter length portrait, now in the possession of Earl Crewe. Here there seems to be something of the manner of Sir Joshua in several particulars, which is possibly a conscious imitation. But in portrait after portrait, and certainly in every piece which is most characteristic of Romney, whether it is Mrs. Jordan or Lady Hamilton or Mrs. Currie, the plain robe is the rule. The magnificent picture of Louisa Countess of Mansfield (in profile, seated under a tree) is now on loan from Lord Cathcart at the National Gallery, and is hanging close beside Mrs. Mark Currie’s; and while both depart from the letter of this rule, they depend for their magical effect upon the spirit of it. Lady Mansfield’s flowing robe is of a pale yellowish tinge, and a voluminous scarf of grey, almost as pale, mingles with the folds of drapery. But as contrasted with the deep shadows of the foliage against which the brightly coloured profile is set, the general impression is of an exquisitely posed figure in the simplest of flowing creamy white robes. No ornament fixes the eye, no violent contrast of colour interrupts the rhythm of the whole figure. “The design,” says Mr. Roberts in his Catalogue Raisonné, “appears to have been adopted from a Greek gem.”

Mrs. Currie’s dress, which I hope I am correct in describing as a frock, is of pure white; but it is faintly striped, not I think in colour, but in texture; and there are some bows on the elbows, and a sash of pale lake.

Anything less reminiscent of a Greek statue than this radiant young English beauty in a muslin frock, I am quite willing to admit, it would be difficult to think of. At first sight a severely classical taste would be more likely to condemn her for the

unmitigated prettiness that is usually associated with the cheapest kind of pictorial imbecility. But let her not be condemned unheard. That she was an exceedingly pretty woman need hardly be doubted, and that she wished to be made as pretty as possible in her portrait may fairly be taken for granted. If she had any other qualities it is probable that her name would be remembered for them. As it is, Romney has conscientiously painted a portrait of her which probably pleased her almost as much as it pleases all of us to-day. “In his composition,” we remember, “the beholder was forcibly struck by the sentiment at the first glance.” How true this is of Mrs. Currie and her prettiness! The painter’s whole effort is concentrated on that one quality, and instead of dissipating the beholder’s attention with accessories, he soothes it with a seeming artlessness which no one but a great painter could nearly accomplish. Mrs. Currie’s drapery is of course strictly English--in substance at any rate and form. But here again we feel the guiding or restraining hand of the Classic Muse, just as we should have seen it had Romney been painting Mrs. Currie in the character of Antigone. As it was, Romney was speaking English and not Greek; only it is the English, as it were, of a finely educated man.

But in placing Romney so high above the crowd of ordinary portrait painters, and a little higher than any except Reynolds and Gainsborough, it is only fair to consider how far short he fell of equalling those two. And it must not be forgotten that the limitations which he imposed upon himself were quite as likely to affect his popularity among his patrons and their friends as with posterity. Classic simplicity is an invaluable quality in the portraiture of everyday men and women, especially when the latter are young and pretty; but a gallery of portraits by Romney would afford a much narrower view of the capabilities of the English School than a similar exhibition of the work of Reynolds or Gainsborough. The oft-repeated assertion of Lord Chancellor Thurlow that “Reynolds and Romney divide the town, and I am of the Romney faction,” must be taken with a considerably larger pinch of salt than is popularly accepted with it. In the first place, Romney was not at all in fashion until after his return from Rome in 1785, by which time Reynolds had been painting portraits for at least twenty years. Gainsborough, too, who was by seven years the senior of Romney, was quite as many years ahead of him in practice, though he had only recently come to London from Bath. In the year 1785 we know that Romney earned £3635 from portraits. At this time, so his pupil Robinson records, his prices were £20 for a head, £30 for a kit-cat, £40 for a half-length, and £80 for a whole length. Taking the average at as low a figure as £35, this means about a hundred commissions in his busiest year. This is certainly a large number, and Sir Joshua never had more than a hundred-and-fifty in a year; but it must not be taken as an average for any great length of years.

Again, when we look at the names of his most distinguished patrons, the list is not as long or as imposing as those of Reynolds and Gainsborough. The latter had the patronage of Royalty, besides a good number of the aristocracy, while Reynolds had, if I may be allowed the expression, “mopped up” all that was most brilliant in beauty, birth, and genius, leaving very little for anybody else. The Catalogue of the Exhibition of National Portraits held at South Kensington in 1867, enumerates but twenty pictures by Romney, and as many as a hundred and fifty by Reynolds.

That Romney’s sensitive disposition and retiring habit of life may in some degree account for his not being more widely popular in his own time is no doubt true. But apart from any other consideration there is no question that a fine portrait by Reynolds is a more satisfying possession than any but the very finest by Romney, and a characteristic one by Gainsborough more exhilarating. Though there is at least one instance in which he “wiped Reynolds’s eye,” namely, with his magnificent head of _John Wesley_, which was painted in 1789, when Wesley was eighty-six years old. “At the earnest desire of Mrs T.,” the old man wrote, “I once more sat for my picture. Mr. Romney is a painter

indeed! He struck off an exact likeness at once, and did more in an hour than Sir Joshua did in ten.”