George Romney was a leading British portrait painter who became popular for his ability to create flattering images of his subjects regardless of personality. His friend Flaxman wrote of him: ‘his heart and soul were engaged in the pursuit of historical and ideal painting’, but his stunning portraits are among the most impressive of his century. The surface of the canvas is freely brushed throughout, the strokes sitting alongside each other and blending with an apparent effortlessness that offsets the edgy control of the figure’s outline. Romney hankered after success as a history painter and produced a painting of The Tempest for Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery in 1790, as well as his many portraits of Emma Hamilton (then Emma Hart) in allegorical or classical guise. Romney greatly admired the work of Nicolas Le Sueur, whose use of antique motifs appealed to him, and late in his career studied the works of Raphael, Titian, and Correggio. We will only use your contact details to reply to your request. Lost your password? George Romney, who died in Kendal in 1802 was one of the most celebrated portrait painters of his time, along with Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. The Grove Encyclopedia of Art ranks him third after Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, though followers of Sir Henry Raeburn might object to this rating. These portraits of Emma are a perfect fusion of Emma’s theatrical instinct with Romney’s Romantic bravura brushwork; his love for her was not requited. The colour scheme is simple and restrained, a harmonious mix of white, pale blue and russet-brown, the olive-green of the trees at the side providing subtle offbeat accents. George Romney (1734-1802), Portrait painter. George Romney - English 18th century portrait of Mr Holland, c. 1785 Unknown - Portrait of Young Nobleman 1796 Oil on Canvas Unknown - Empire French Family Portrait Oil on Canvas He had sat to him for a head and shoulders portrait as early as May 1776, and at the beginning of 1779 had commissioned a second head and shoulders, on which work had proceeded in casual fashion up till the time of his marriage. (1732-1813), 1784. Once the honeymoon was out of the way, it was predictable that Burgoyne would decide to commission a likeness of his new wife as a pendant for the second of his own portraits, then still unfinished in Romney’s studio. Romney’s society portraits of 1764-73 show a grandeur of treatment and a graceful, elongated neoclassical style. Romney’s career began when he toured the northern English counties painting portraits for a few guineas each. George Romney was an English portrait painter. You will receive mail with link to set new password. During the course of 1781 Mrs Burgoyne gave Romney seventeen sittings. He specialised in portraits and historical pictures such as The Death of General Wolfe, shown at the Society of Arts in 1763. In 1762 he went to London. He was the most fashionable artist of his day, painting many leading society figures – including his artistic muse, Emma Hamilton, mistress of Lord Nelson. 1778, Portrait of David Hartley, M.P. Their geniality extended to telling their relatives about Romney: Mrs Burgoyne’s aunt Hannah Benyon (wife of her half-uncle Richard Benyon of neighbouring Gidea Hall) began sitting to Romney a month after her niece, and Montagu Burgoyne’s elder brother John became a client the following year. In October 1780 Elizabeth married the thirty-year-old Montagu Burgoyne, the younger son of Sir Richard Burgoyne, 6th Baronet, of Sutton, Bedfordshire. George Romney ranks with Reynolds and Gainsborough as one of the finest society portrait painters of the eighteenth century. All rights reserved. II, p.3, illus. His great success with his society patrons depended largely on just this ability for dispassionate flattery. His sitter books record some 1500 sitters between 1776 and 1795; he excelled at painting beautiful and glamorous society women, their elegant poses informed by the study of Italian art. GEORGE ROMNEY. His portrait style is free, swift, and bold. In 1773 he went to Italy for two years, where he studied Raphael’s Stanze frescoes in Rome, Titian’s paintings in Venice, and Correggio’s at Parma. Leaving her daughter with relatives, she became his mistress and was installed at a suburban house in Paddington Green in the name of Mrs. Emma Hart. There was clearly something elusive about the flighty Mrs Burgoyne (she cancelled a further seven appointments with the artist) that it took Romney a long while to capture satisfactorily, and many of the early sittings may have turned into chat sessions. George Romney (1734-1802) is considered one of the great 18th-century English portrait painters. The design is understated but sophisticated: the shadowy plinth at the side provides a rectilinear underpinning against which the diagonal accents of the arms, the folds of the dress, the shadows and the clouds direct the eye to the focal area of the picture where the story of the future of the family is taking shape: the central area between the two white loops and the two blue waistbands, the shaping of the lower of which discreetly reinforces the message. George Romney [1734-1802] was the most celebrated Portrait painters of his time, along with Reynolds and Gainsborough. Mrs Burgoyne’s first pregnancy was evidently what brought the sittings to a halt at the end of April and when in November, now as the proud mother of a baby daughter, she was ready to resume, Romney may well have detected a fundamental change of character and decided to begin the portrait afresh. Interestingly, he was considered to be less adept at painting men. I, New Haven and London 2015, p.105, no.180a[1]. Anglo-Irish politician and orator: 12 January 1729 – 9 July 1797. The following year he moved back to his long-neglected wife in Kendal and died there in 1802. Alex Kidson, author of George Romney: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings suggests that the views behind both sitters likely depicts a view of the Lake District. George Romney (British, 1734 - 1802 ), Two Studies for a Family Portrait, graphite with pen and brown ink on wove paper Edmund Burke - portrait after George Romney. In 1762 Romney left his wife and family in Kendal and moved to London to seek his fortune. [1] The incorrect provenance for no.180a is corrected in this essay. George Romney was an English portrait painter. Mr Burgoyne paid for the portrait, together with the pendant of himself, in November 1782. Commissioned by Montagu Burgoyne, the husband of the sitter; H Ward and W Roberts, Romney, London 1904, vol. Romney had a talent for painting complex portraits with multiple figures, which would often require over a dozen sessions with his sitters. The present canvas is Alicia’s Mrs Burgoyne and it has every appearance of being the original. Husband and wife were fabled for their affection for each other, and are said to have been put forward as candidates for the Dunmow Flitch of Bacon – an ancient Essex ceremony celebrating a happily married couple.

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