Chapter V: Preface (5)

Of a sedate and steady disposition, but somewhat dull and 'backward' at his books, George Romney, in his eleventh year, was taken from school, and, until he arrived at twenty-one, was employed in his father's workshop. The lad had manifested skill as a carver in wood; had constructed a violin for himself, and read with deep interest Da Vinci's _Treatise on Painting_, making copies of the engravings. His natural talent soon further developed itself. His father had a business acquaintance with one Mr. Alderman Redman, of Kendal, upholsterer. The Alderman's sister, a Mrs. Gardner, chanced to see some of young Romney's drawings, was struck with their cleverness, and encouraged him to persevere, and to make his first essay in portraiture by taking her likeness. The boy produced a drawing that was much extolled; further evidences of his enthusiasm for art were forthcoming; and eventually John Romney was induced to take his son to Kendal, and apprentice him to an itinerant painter named Christopher Steele, a showy gentleman, who had been in Paris, aped French manners, wore fantastic clothes, and was popularly known as _Count_ Steele--a sort of art-Dulcamara, in fact. Articles of apprenticeship were duly signed, sealed, and delivered between John Romney, cabinet-maker, and George his son, of the one part, and Christopher Steele, painter, of the other part. George Romney was bound for the term of four years, to serve his master faithfully and diligently, to obey his reasonable commands, and keep his secrets; John Romney was to provide his son with 'suitable and necessary clothes, both linen and woollen;' and Christopher Steele, in consideration of twenty-one pounds, covenanted to instruct his apprentice in the art or science of a painter, and to find him meat, drink, washing, and lodging during the said term. Steele was no great artist, though he had studied under Carlo Vanloo, of Paris. He troubled himself little enough as to his pupil's progress, employing him for the most part in grinding colours and in the drudgery of the studio. But George Romney made the best of his opportunities. And he was not unhappy. He had fallen in love with Mary Abbott, one of two sisters living with their widowed mother, in humble circumstances, at Kendal. But soon Steele was bent on quitting Kendal, had made up his mind to move to York, and directed his pupil to prepare to accompany him forthwith. The lovers, of course, were in despair at the thought of their approaching separation. In the end they secured their mutual fidelity by a hasty and private marriage. Reproved for his precipitancy and imprudence, Romney replied that his marriage would surely act as a spur to his application: 'My thoughts being now still and not obstructed by youthful follies, I can practise with more diligence and success than ever.' While at York he zealously devoted himself to his art. His wife, left at Kendal, assisted him with such small sums as she could spare, sending him half a guinea at a time, hidden under the seal of a letter; in return he forwarded to her his own portrait, his first work in oil.

After staying nearly a year in York, Steele and his apprentice moved to Lancaster. Meeting with little encouragement there, Steele, always restless and embarrassed, determined to try his fortune in Ireland. The pupil was now very anxious to be quit of his preceptor; he longed to be practising on his own account. He had at different times lent Steele small sums of money, amounting altogether to ten pounds. He now proposed that both debt and articles of apprenticeship should be cancelled--that the release of the debtor should be the consideration for the freedom of the apprentice. Steele consented, and George Romney became his own master.

His prices until he went to London were certainly not high: two guineas for a three-quarter portrait and six for a whole figure on a kit-cat canvas. The only way of making this poor tariff remunerative was by extreme rapidity of execution; and few men have ever painted so rapidly as Romney. But this rapid manner has its disadvantages. If habitually persisted in, it in time renders thorough finish impossible to the painter. An absolute necessity in Romney's early life, it became a distinct vice in his after works. To this were in part attributable the crowd of incomplete canvases the painter left behind him at his death, and the characteristic sketchiness traceable even in his most esteemed pictures.

At York he disposed of twenty pictures by a lottery, which produced little more than forty pounds. Among these works was a scene from _Tristram Shandy_, upon which he had bestowed some pains; for at York Romney had attracted the notice of Laurence Sterne (whose portrait Steele had painted), and received at his hands marks of attention and friendship.

Twenty-seven years old, Romney began to weary of provincial triumphs,--to long for the wider field of exertion and the more enlightened recognition he could only find in the capital. He had toiled early and late to acquire money and skill sufficient for a creditable appearance in town. A son and daughter had been born of his marriage, yet his domestic ties could not bind him to the north, while his ambition was prompting him so urgently to seek certain fame and fortune in the south. He managed to raise a sum of one hundred pounds. Taking fifty for his travelling expenses, he left the balance for the support of his wife and children, and without a single letter of recommendation or introduction, set forth to try his chances alone in London. He was soon obliged to send for twenty pounds more, of the fifty he had left with his wife. He started southward on the 14th of March 1762, in company with two other Kendal gentlemen, on horseback. He stayed a day at Manchester, where he met his old master Count Steele, who warmly greeted his pupil, and rode with the party next day as far as Stockport. After much alarm from highwaymen--for in those days country banks were not, and every traveller was his own purse-bearer--Mr. Romney and his friends arrived safely at the Castle Inn, London, on the 21st March. The painter remained at the inn for a fortnight, until he was able to settle down comfortably in lodgings, in Dove Court, Mansion House. He was soon hard at work upon 'The Death of Rizzio,' adorning his walls with pictures he had brought with him or sent for afterwards from Kendal, such as 'King Lear,' 'Elfrida,' 'The Death of Lefevre,' and a few portraits of friends. The Rizzio picture has been represented as 'a work of extraordinary merit, combining energetic action with strong expression.' Its fate was sad enough; attracting no notice, producing no profit, and at length becoming an incumbrance in the studio, the painter destroyed it with his own hands; or, more probably, cut it up and sold it piecemeal, for one of his biographers mentions having seen certain heads by Romney in which terror was strongly depicted, and which had evidently formed portions of some larger work. In the August following his arrival in town he quitted Dove Court for Bearbinder's Lane. Here he executed several portraits at three guineas each, and painted his 'Death of Wolfe,' to which was awarded a prize of fifty guineas by the Society of Arts. Out of this picture arose much controversy. Adverse critics objected that the work could not with propriety be regarded as an historical composition, because, in point of fact, no historian had yet recorded the event it pretended to represent; Wolfe's death, however glorious and memorable, was too recent to be within the legitimate scope of high art! Further, Mr. Romney's work was condemned as 'a mere coat and waistcoat picture,' and much fault was found with his accurate rendering of the regimentals of the officers and soldiers and the silk stockings of the general. A few years later Benjamin West was greatly praised for his treatment of the same subject; Reynolds, after much deliberation and the statement, in the first instance, of a directly contrary opinion, avowing that the young American's picture would occasion 'a complete revolution in art.' It had been the plan, theretofore, in pictures of historical events of whatever period, to portray the characters engaged in the garb (or no garb) of antiquity; but West had declined, in placing upon his canvas an event of the year 1759, to introduce the costume of classic times; altogether disregarding the dislike of the connoisseurs to cocked hats, cross-belts, laced-coats, and bayonets, and their demands for bows and arrows, helmets, bucklers, and nakedness. But, in truth, West was merely following in the footsteps of George Romney, who had already produced a 'Death of Wolfe' in the correct dress of the period. There were few to laud poor Romney, however. Even the decision which gave him the prize was reversed, and the premium ultimately awarded to Mortimer, who had exhibited at the same time a picture of 'Edward the Confessor seizing the Treasurer of his mother.' Romney was obliged to be content with a gratuity of twenty-five guineas.

The painter's friends at once charged Reynolds with an active share in effecting this result; and indeed it seems clear that the reversal of the decision was due to his interference. They averred that he was anything but an impartial judge; that he was well aware the 'Death of Wolfe' was the work of a portrait painter; that he could not bear the thought of a rival near his throne, and had laid down the principle 'that it was impossible for two painters in the same department of the art to be long in friendship with each other.' He would not permit an obscure painter from the country to carry off a prize from a student of Mortimer's pretensions. With Mortimer he was on terms of friendship: his fellow-pupil under Hudson, and, above all, no portrait painter. What measure of truth there may have been in these allegations it is now difficult to decide. Thenceforward Reynolds and Romney were certainly enemies. Between the two painters, indeed, there never existed the slightest intercourse of any kind.

The curious treatment he had received from the Society of Arts made much stir, however, and brought the young painter friends and patrons. Probably the next best thing to securing the friendship of the future President of the Academy was the reputation of having incurred his enmity. 'The Death of Wolfe' was purchased by Mr. Rowland Stephenson, the banker, who presented it to Governor Varelst, by whom it was placed in the Council-Chamber at Calcutta. Romney moved from the city to the Mews-gate, Charing Cross, probably to be nearer the exhibition in Spring Gardens, and the Artists' Academy in St. Martin's Lane. At this time, it may be noted, Dance and Mortimer were living in Covent Garden, while Hogarth and Reynolds had set up their easels in Leicester Fields. Romney now raised his prices for portraits to five guineas, and saved money sufficient to enable him to pay a long-dreamt-of visit to Paris. He was absent six weeks; and on his return took chambers in Gray's Inn, where he painted several portraits of Members of the legal profession, including Sir Joseph Yates, one of the judges of the Court of the King's Bench. In Gray's Inn, too, he painted his picture of the 'Death of King Edmund,' which, in 1765, obtained a prize of fifty guineas from the Society of Arts. For this work, however, he was unable to find a purchaser. In 1767 his circumstances had so far improved that he felt himself justified in moving to a house in Great Newport Street, within a few doors of Reynolds, where he remained until his visit to Italy, in 1773. Meanwhile his friends were loud in their laudation of the prodigy who, in historical works, they declared, promised to rival the great masters, and in portraiture threatened to wrest the palm from Reynolds himself. He now raised his prices again, charging twelve guineas for a three-quarter portrait, and found no lack of sitters at the increased rate. Whether or not he sought for academic honours is not clear; certain it is they were not conferred upon him: and he invariably chose to send his pictures to the rooms of the Chartered Society, in Spring Gardens, rather than to the exhibitions of the Royal Academy. Artists, in every way his inferiors, were welcomed to the ranks of 'the forty;' but to Romney never were granted even the poorer dignities of associateship. This neglect of him he always ascribed to the sinister influence of Reynolds and his followers, among whom, in this instance, must be numbered Fuseli, who was much given to sneering at Romney as 'a coat and waistcoat painter,' and who, in his edition of _Pilkington_, says, pertly, 'Romney was made for his times, and his times for him.' Allan Cunningham suggests, what is probably true, that Romney was a man likely to take a sort of morbid pleasure in his isolation, and in the odium which would necessarily devolve upon the Academy by its neglect of an artist of his eminence. His name has gone to swell the list of painters of mark who have ventured to defy the influence and opposition of the Academy, and have single-handed fought their way to success notwithstanding.

In 1771, through the introduction of Cumberland, Mrs. Yates, the actress, sat to Romney for a picture of the 'Tragic Muse.' Of course, this work was completely eclipsed by Reynolds's 'Tragic Muse,' painted some thirteen years later. Notwithstanding the demerits of the President's picture, the plagiarism of the pose and draperies from Michael Angelo's Joel in the Capella Sistina, the incongruities of the theatrical state-chair in the clouds, the gold lace, plaited hair, imperial tiara and strings of pearls,--still the majestic beauty of his model, her classical features, broad brow, grand form and superb eyes, enabled him to surpass immeasurably the effort of his younger and less favoured rival. Mrs. Yates, though an accomplished actress, was far from possessing the personal gifts of the Kembles' sister. To Romney's studio Cumberland also brought Garrick, with some hope that the great actor might interest himself in favour of the painter. But Garrick was too closely allied with Sir Joshua; he was wilfully blinded to the merits of Romney. He criticised with most impertinent candour the works he found in the studio, pausing before a large family group of portraits and with an affected imitation of the attitude of the chief figure, saying, 'Upon my word, Mr. Romney, this is a very regular, well-ordered family; and this is a very bright-rubbed mahogany table, at which that motherly, good lady is sitting; and this worthy good gentleman in the scarlet waistcoat is doubtless a very excellent subject--to the state, I mean (if all these are his children)--but not for your art, Mr. Romney, if you mean to pursue it with that success which I hope will attend you!' His 'pasteboard Majesty of Drury Lane,' in truth, knew nothing of the painter's art; and from any other than Romney would have incurred, as he well merited, most unceremonious ejection from the studio. He was safe enough with Romney, however, as he probably well knew. The painter, deeply mortified, silently turned the family picture with its face to the wall. He was extremely sensitive: a curious diffidence mingled with his conviction of his own cleverness. He was readily disconcerted: at a laugh, a jest, a few words of satiric criticism, he lost faith in himself, interest in his works; the subject which had promised so much pleasure now seemed to him fruitful only in pain and disappointment; he would seek at once a new occupation, and add another to a growing pile of canvases which the ridicule and captiousness of others, and his own weakness and caprice, had combined to leave for ever incomplete. Perhaps it was by way of balm for the wound he had unwittingly inflicted, by bringing Garrick to the studio, that Cumberland published in the Public Advertiser his verses upon the painters of the day, with especial mention of Romney and his picture of 'Contemplation,' which work, the poet says in a note, 'the few who attended the unfashionable exhibition in Spring Gardens may possibly recollect.' Already the success of the Royal Academy was telling disastrously upon the 'Society of Artists of Great Britain' to which Romney had attached himself.

In 1773, our painter, in his thirty-ninth year, and in receipt of an income of some twelve hundred pounds, derived solely from his profession, set sail for Italy, bearing with him letters of introduction from the Dukes of Gloucester and Richmond to the Pope, and accompanied by his close friend, Humphrey, the miniature-painter. His Holiness gave gracious permission to the artist to erect scaffolds in the Vatican, the better to make copies of the Raphaels which decorate the palace.

Among the pictures executed during Romney's Italian tour was a portrait of the eccentric Wortley Montagu (Lady Mary's son), who had assumed the manners and attire of a Turk, and who, shortly after his sitting to the painter, died from a bone sticking in his throat. Another work which he brought back with him to England was a daring attempt to represent 'Providence brooding over chaos.' In later years, when Lord George Gordon and his mob were sacking the Roman Catholic chapels throughout London, and plundering the houses of all suspected of sympathy with the Latin Church, Romney became alarmed lest his picture should attract the attention of the rioters, and, regarded by them as an evidence of idolatrous devotion, lead to the destruction of his house and property. The canvas was at once removed out of sight. At the sale of his works, on the death of the painter, his son changed the name of the picture to 'Jupiter Pluvius,' under which more marketable guise it soon found a purchaser.

On the 7th of June 1775, Romney arrived again in England: his return being celebrated by glowing strains from Cumberland's ready muse. As Gibbon said of the poetic praises of the painter's friends--'If they did not contribute much to his professional prosperity, they might be justly called an elegant advertisement of his merit.' Sitters of all ranks now crowded to his studio. If his absence from England had done nothing else for him, it had wonderfully enhanced his reputation. But persons of taste and quality were of opinion that his visit to Italy had wrought marvels. They pretended to see a striking improvement, not merely in the mechanical, but also in the mental part of his work; his conceptive powers were found to be strengthened and enriched, and his method of painting benefited beyond measure by his Italian studies; he was no longer cold, and harsh, and heavy; all was now warmth and light, tenderness and beauty. It was at this time that Reynolds began to speak of Romney as 'the man in Cavendish Square.' He had established himself in the spacious mansion which the death of Cotes, the Royal Academician, had left vacant, and which, it may be noted, after the expiry of Romney's tenancy, was occupied by Sir Martin Archer Shee. Not without considerable anxiety, however, did Romney enter upon possession of his new abode. He was seized with an irrepressible misgiving that he was embarking upon a career of far greater expense than his success had warranted, or than the emoluments of his profession would enable him to maintain. 'In his singular constitution,' his biographer Hayley here finds occasion to observe, 'there was so much nervous timidity united to great bodily strength and to enterprising and indefatigable ambition, that he used to tremble, when he walked every morning in his new habitation, with a painful apprehension of not finding business sufficient to support him. These fears were only early flutterings of that hypochondriacal disorder which preyed in secret on his comfort during many years, and which, though apparently subdued by the cheering exhortations of frendship and great professional prosperity, failed not to show itself more formidably when he was exhausted by labour in the decline of life.' His trepidation was quite groundless, however. He had no lack of patrons or employment; the Duke of Richmond gave him generous encouragement and support, sat for his own picture, in profile, and commissioned portraits of Admiral Keppel, Mr. Burke, the Honourable Mrs. Damer, Lord John Cavendish, Lord George Lennox, and others. The painter's income soon sprung up to between three and four thousand a year, produced by portraits only. In 1776 he was seriously ill from a violent cold caught by standing in the rain, amongst the crowd outside Drury Lane Theatre, waiting to witness Garrick's farewell performance. He was cured, however, by Sir Richard Jebb, the eminent physician, who prescribed a bottle of Madeira to his patient, and attended him from that time forward in every illness, but generously declined to accept a fee for his services.

And the Mary Abbott whom George Romney had married years before and left behind at Kendal, with his son and daughter and thirty pounds, while he sought his fortune alone in London--the wife, his union with whom was to be as 'a spur to his application'--was she to be denied the sight of her husband's success, a share in his prosperity, a place in his house in Cavendish Square? It is hard to understand the utter unmanliness and heartlessness of Romney's conduct in this respect. There is no word of accusation against her--- no hint affecting her character--no question as to her being in any way unworthy of his love and trust, and of her rightful position by his side. His separation from her, in the first instance, was, under all the circumstances of the case, no doubt justifiable; and it is hardly possible to believe that his original withdrawal from Kendal was in pursuance of a plan of deliberate abandonment of his family. But for the protraction of this separation, after the first necessity for it had passed away, there would seem to be absolutely no excuse. His son, the Rev. John Romney, with a laudable desire to serve his father's memory, urges, as some faint apology for the painter's cruelty, that his affairs were at all times less prosperous than they seemed; that his brothers were a heavy burden upon him and drained him of his savings; that his professional journeys to Paris and Rome consumed all the money he could raise; and that thus a 'succession of untoward circumstances threw impediments in the way of good intent, till time and absence became impediments also.'

In truth, Romney appears to have been always curiously timid and reticent; to have suffered from excessive moral cowardice. On his first arrival in London and association with the young painters of the day, he began to feel some shame at his early imprudence, and some alarm lest it should present any hindrance to his professional advancement. He had given 'hostages to fortune,' and dreaded the result. He was thus persistently silent on the subject; and, as time went on, it became more and more difficult for him to avow the marriage he had from the first made so much a matter of mystery. And then, too, the prosperous unions of other artists, his contemporaries, excited his jealousy and increased his apprehensions. He began to think it indispensable to the success of a painter that he should marry well. Nathaniel Dance had been united to Mrs. Drummer, known as 'the Yorkshire fortune,' with eighteen thousand a year. John Astley had secured the hand of Lady Duckenfield, with an income of almost equal value. Then, from his literary and poetic friends he was little likely to receive encouragement to act justly in such a matter. Laurence Sterne was no especially good exemplar of conjugal fidelity. Mr. Hayley and the rest indulged in extremely poetic views concerning the privileges and prerogatives of genius; were opposed to trammels and scruples of any kind in such respect; and poured round the painter dense showers of versified adulation, so infused with ideality and Platonism that the simple rules of right and wrong were quite washed away by the harmonious and transcendental torrent. Romney, weak, vain, selfish, suffered himself to be led down paths which, however flowery and pleasant, were yet mean and contemptible enough, and listening to the twanging of Hayley's lyre, turned a deaf ear to the pining of the poor woman fading away, alone and deserted in the north--the Mary Abbott whom he had vowed in his youth until death should them part to love, honour, and cherish. For some thirty years the husband and wife never set eyes upon each other--were absolutely separated.

He had now as much work as he could possibly execute. He was often at his easel for thirteen hours a day, beginning at eight in the morning, lighting his lamp when the daylight had gone, and toiling on sometimes until midnight. He had five, and occasionally six, sitters a day. He generally completed a three-quarter portrait in three or four sittings, and could accomplish this easily, provided no hands were introduced into the picture. The sittings varied in duration from three-quarters of an hour to an hour and a half each. His only time now for ideal or historical art was in the interval between the departure and arrival of his sitters, or when they failed to keep their engagements with him; but he would regard such disappointments with pleasure, having always at hand a spare canvas upon which he could employ himself with some fancy subject. Of course, this close application was not without injurious effect upon him in the end. 'My health,' he wrote, at a later period of his life, 'is not at all constant. My nerves give way, and I have no time to go in quest of pleasure to prevent a decline of health. My hands are full, and I shall be forced to refuse new faces at last, to be enabled to finish the numbers I have in an unfinished state. I shall regret the necessity of forbearing to take new faces; there is a delight in novelty greater than in the profit gained by sending them home finished. But it must be done.' His annual retirement for a month's holiday to Hayley's house at Eartham was of little real service to his health. He was compelled the while to attitudinize incessantly as a genius. Hayley, in globose language, was always entreating his guest to moderate his intense spirit of application, conjuring him to rest from his excess of labour 'in the name of those immortal powers the Beautiful and the Sublime,' etc., while he was at the same time urging the painter to new and greater toils, teasing the jaded man with endless suggestions, bewildering him with a jabber of sham sentimentality and hazy æstheticism. 'Whenever Romney was my guest,' writes Hayley, 'I was glad to put aside my own immediate occupation for the pleasure of searching for and presenting to him a copious choice of such subjects as might happily exercise his powers.' Poor Romney was permitted no rest. Hayley was for ever in close attendance gratifying his own inordinate vanity at the painter's cost. He produced four representations of Serena, the heroine of Hayley's _Triumphs of Temper_. He painted a scene from the _Tempest_ for Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, which project Romney always claimed to have originated, and Hayley was in the studio sitting for Prospero. At Hayley's house a small coterie of poetasters, male and female, assembled for purposes of mutual glorification in the most windbag sort of verse, and were glad to buy portraits and sketches from the painter with such small coin as sonnets and stanzas, and poetic epistles. Romney executes a likeness of Mrs. Hayley, and is rewarded with eighty-eight glowing lines by her husband, who calls to his aid Eolus, Orion, Boreas, Auster, Zephyr, Eurus, Famine, and Ceres for the better decoration of his verse. He paints a portrait of Miss Seward, and the lady's gratitude gushes forth in eulogy of

....the pleasures of the Hayleyan board,
Where, as his pencil, Romney's soul sublime
Glows with bold lines, original and strong, etc.

'Beloved and honoured Titiano!' she wrote, some years later; 'how that name recalls the happy, happy hours I passed with you at Eartham; when by the title 'Muse' you summoned me to the morning walk!' Amongst the drossy twaddle which passed current as poetry at Eartham, a sonnet in Romney's honour by a true poet--William Cowper--may be counted as pure gold.

In the beginning of 1782 Emma Lyon, then known as Mrs. Hart, afterwards as Lady Hamilton, first sat to Mr. Romney. Painters and poets enough had already been busy celebrating her loveliness, the lady nothing loth. She took pleasure in the full display of her charms: holding probably that her beauty was not given her for herself alone, but that the whole world, if it listed, might at least look on it and adore. At one time indeed she was rumoured to have personated the Goddess of Health, when the 'celestial' Doctor Graham was giving his strange and indecorous lectures in Pall Mall; but that scandal has been contradicted. Certain it is, however, that her witcheries effectually subjugated Romney and Hayley. The painter went fairly mad about her; could not see her often enough; was restless and miserable out of her presence; reduced the number of his sitters, and admitted no visitors until noon, that he might have time sufficient to devote to the beautiful Emma and her portraits. This infatuation endured for years. 'At present,' he wrote to Hayley, in 1791, 'and the greatest part of the summer, I shall be engaged in painting pictures from the _divine lady_. I cannot give her any other epithet; for I think her superior to all womankind.' For a long time he seemed to be able only to paint Emma Lyon. His son enumerates some two dozen portraits, in which she appears as Circe, Iphigenia, St. Cecilia, Sensibility, a Bacchante, Alope, the Spinstress, Cassandra (for the Shakespeare Gallery), Calypso, a Pythoness, Joan of Arc, a Magdalen, etc.; some of these were left unfinished. But at one time the form and features of his beautiful model appeared upon the painter's canvas, let him try to paint what he would. The fair Emma had absolutely enthralled him. Absent from the object of his adoration, he was reduced to despair. He writes to Hayley, complaining that he has discovered an alteration in his Emma's conduct: 'a coldness and neglect seemed to have taken the place of her repeated declaration of regard.' Hayley sends up some verses for the painter to copy and sign, beginning 'Gracious Cassandra,' and asking pitifully,

.... what cruel clouds have darkly chilled
Thy favour that to me was vital fire?
Oh, let it shine again: or worse than killed
Thy soul-sunk artist feels his art expire!

The poet seems to have been not less love-stricken. 'Her features,' he writes, 'like the language of Shakespeare, could exhibit all the feelings of nature and all the gradations of every passion with a most fascinating truth and felicity of expression.' Presently the lady has given her hand to Sir William Hamilton and set sail for Naples. She makes peace with the painter, however, before her departure; calls upon him, resumes her former kindness of manner, is as cordial with him as ever, and sits to him for a portrait he is to paint _as a present to her mother_. Poor Romney!

In 1794 there were symptoms of decay in the painter's constitution; his mental infirmities increased. He became the victim of a sort of intellectual superfetation. He was perpetually planning labours of a magnitude which, from the first, rendered them hopelessly impracticable. His brain was morbidly active, while his hand grew tremulous and uncertain, and his sight dimmed. His manner became irritable, and more than ever timid and suspicious. He wrote to his son: 'I have made many grand designs; I have formed a system of original subjects, moral and my own, and I think one of the grandest that has been thought of; but nobody knows it. Hence, it is my view to wrap myself in retirement and pursue these plans, as I begin to feel I cannot bear trouble of any kind.' He quits his house in Cavendish Square and becomes the purchaser of a retreat at Holly Bush Hill, Hampstead, after abandoning a project he at one time entertained for the purchase of four acres near the Edgware Road, and covering them with a group of fantastic buildings of his own design. To the house at Hampstead he made many whimsical additions, however, erecting a large picture and sculpture-gallery, a wooden arcade or covered ride, a dining-room close to the kitchen, with a buttery hatch opening into it, so that he and his guests might enjoy beefsteaks 'hot and hot' upon the same plan as prevailed at the Beefsteak Club, then occupying a room in the Lyceum Theatre. The cost of these changes amounted to nearly three thousand pounds. With quite a childish eagerness he took possession of his new house before the walls were dry, and while the workmen were still completing the changes he had ordered. Still he had not room enough for his numberless art-treasures. His pictures were crammed and huddled away any and everywhere. Some were arranged along the wooden arcade, where, exposed to the open air, and to the alternate action of moisture and frost, they were almost entirely destroyed in the course of the winter, while some were deliberately stolen. The painter could do little work now: he could begin, but was unable to finish or even to resume his undertaking. His appetite for art seemed to fail him; he ceased to have faith in himself; he was preyed on by nervous dejection; weighed down with dark alarms and vague forebodings. Soon his head is swimming and his right hand numb with incipient paralysis. Hayley visits him for the last time in April 1799, and had 'the grief of perceiving that his increasing weakness of body and mind afforded only a gloomy prospect for the residue of his life.' He lays down his brush for ever. Suddenly, without a word to any one of his intentions, he takes the northern coach and arrives at Kendal. Fainting and exhausted, he is received with the utmost tenderness and affection by his wife. No word of reproach for the neglect and solitude to which he had doomed her for so many years escapes her lips. With unremitting solicitude, with religious earnestness, this loving, forgiving woman tends the sick-bed of the sinking man. His mind expires before his body; for months he remains hopelessly imbecile, free from suffering, but wholly unconscious; breathing his last at Kendal on the 15th of November 1802, in the sixty-eighth year of his age.

The inconsistency manifest between Romney's wanton cruelty in his domestic character, and his reputation among his intimates and contemporaries for great kindliness of nature, generosity, and general worth, is remarkable enough. There are many men, however, who appear to the least advantage when seen by the light of their own fireside. Hayley says much of his friend's _extreme sensibility_:' his lips,' writes the poet, 'quivered with emotions of pity at the sight of distress or at the relation of a pathetic story.' Cumberland mentions that the painter was, 'by constitution, prone to tears.' Yet his charity was not for home wear; the distress he did not see troubled him very little. It is vain to seek for any sufficient apology for Romney's shameful treatment of his wife and children. If it were possible to forget this deep stain upon his character he would seem, in all other relations of life, to be entitled to esteem and commendation. For the poor and needy he was ready, not merely with his sensibility, but with his purse. To his friends he was ever faithful and liberal. After attaining professional eminence he was almost indifferent to the emoluments of his art, prizing money much less for its own sake than for the recognition of his position and abilities that it demonstrated; while to all young artists he was especially kind and indulgent. He was the first to encourage Flaxman, and to appreciate and applaud his works; was ever the cordial and loving friend of the sculptor, as their correspondence amply testifies. 'I always remember,' says Flaxman, 'Mr. Romney's notice of my boyish years and productions with gratitude; his original and striking conversation; his masterly, grand, and feeling compositions are continually before me; and I still feel the benefits of his acquaintance and recommendations.'

Romney's historical pictures are very numerous; though comparatively few of them can be considered as completely finished works. According to Allan Cunningham's estimate, for one really finished there are five half done, and for five half done there are at least a dozen merely sketched out on the canvas. The painter was all impulse; very eager and impatient at the beginning, but soon wearied, and only by painful efforts and extraordinary labour ever arriving at the conclusion of his undertakings. There was a want of concentrative power about him; he was ever frittering away his undeniable abilities upon a number of hastily adopted projects, crudely conceived, and remorselessly abandoned when the temperature of his enthusiasm lowered, or any unlooked-for difficulties appeared in his path. How the erratic and desultory nature of his mind was fostered and aggravated by Hayley's mischievous efforts has already been shown. That the glowing eulogium pronounced by Flaxman upon his friend's productions will be endorsed by modern critics is hardly to be expected. Indeed, the characteristics upon which Flaxman especially dwells as worthy of the highest praise will be rather accounted as defects in the present day. The severe imitation of the antique; the artificial simplicity of composition; the bare background; the bas-relief style of treatment; the pseudo-purity which rejected natural feeling and action in favour of a conventionally ideal expression--these were precious gifts in Flaxman's eyes; to modern artists they will appear rather errors of judgment pertaining to a past school of art: false fashions which the present generation of painters have happily outgrown and abandoned. At the same time, however, it should not be forgotten that the majority of Romney's works of this class will bear comparison with the best productions of his contemporaries, and that some of them evince in a remarkable degree his grace of manner, skill in expression, and loftiness of aim.

As a portrait painter Romney will be more prized and remembered, although it is not likely that any existing connoisseurs will be found to proclaim themselves with Lord Thurlow, of 'the Romney faction,' as opposed to the school of Reynolds. In contrasting the works of the rival painters, it is easy to see that however close a race for fame they seemed to be running in their own time, there exists in truth a wide distance between the president of the Academy and 'the man in Cavendish Square.' It is not only that Romney had not the variety of Reynolds; that he could not give to portrait painting the new life with which Reynolds had so happily invested it:--he did not hit character nearly so well; he could not endow his sitters with the air of repose, ease, and elegance peculiar to the Reynolds portraits; he failed to give interest to his backgrounds, generally too near and flat, and heavily painted; and he had not Sir Joshua's success in subduing the eccentricities of costume of the day, and bestowing a certain grace and beauty upon even the most exuberant capes, cuffs, ruffles, wigs, cravats, and frills, prevalent a century ago. There is an air of _fashion_ about many of Romney's portraits as opposed to the look of _nobility_, which is the especial attribute of Reynolds's pictures. In contemplating a Sir Joshua there will be found a propriety, an integrity about the work which effectually prevents all thought of the parts played by the tailor or the milliner at the toilet of the sitter. This is not always the case with Romney's portraits; pattern, and cut, and vogue do not fail to assert themselves. In colour Romney is very unequal; in his own day it was notoriously inferior to Reynolds's, though in spite of some instances of chalkiness and thinness, generally rich, pure, and lustrous. But the President's recourse to meretricious methods of obtaining beauty of tint has ruined the majority of his works, rendering their glories fleeting as photographs. Romney prudently adhered to a safer manner. Many of his pictures can even now be hardly less fresh and glowing in colour than when they first left his easel. His carnations and flesh tints are often singularly fine. His small portraits possess dignity, with force and manliness, however, rather than absolute ease or refinement. But his chief success was in his female heads. In quick and distinct appreciation of beauty he was not behind Reynolds; while, occasionally, he attained a certain poetic height of expression it would be difficult to parallel among Sir Joshua's works.

The fluctuation in fame which Romney has suffered has, of course, fallen to the fate of many of his professional brethren. We read, for instance, that Sir Godfrey Kneller sometimes received in payment for a portrait a considerable sum in hard cash, with a couple of Rembrandt's thrown in by way of makeweight. Yet now a single specimen of Rembrandt exceeds in value a whole gallery of Knellers. And Rembrandt died insolvent, while Sir Godfrey amassed a fortune! No one will dispute the justice of the reversal of judgment which has taken place; the elevation of Rembrandt at the expense of Kneller. But it may be a question whether George Romney has not been unfairly abased, even though it may be agreed on all hands that Sir Joshua Reynolds has not been unduly exalted. Possibly, however, when a man rises or is lifted up to a high pitch of celebrity, it is inevitable that he should in some degree mount upon the prostrate and degraded reputations of his contemporaries.

COSWAY, THE MINIATURE-PAINTER.

Biographers seem often to choose between two weaknesses. They are fond of asserting that the hero of their narration comes in truth of a gentle stock, however the clouds of misfortune may for a time have veiled from general observation the glories of his family tree,--or, failing this, they take a sort of pride in dwelling upon and exaggerating the humbleness of his descent and condition. He is a somebody, or he is a nobody; a gentleman of distinguished origin or an utterly unknown creature with the vaguest views about his lineage: a waif of the wayside, a stray of the streets, his rise from obscurity to eminence being entirely attributable to his own intrinsic merits and exertions.

To this last-mentioned method of biographical treatment has been subjected Richard Cosway, painter and Royal Academician of the last century: a man of fame in his day, though that fame may not have come down to us in a very good state of preservation. The fact that in his prime he was a man of fashion, a 'personage' in society, the companion of princes, and an artist of eminence, has given a sort of impetus to the fancy of tracing him back to a vastly inferior state of life. Writers dealing with the painter's story, and prepared to point to him presently as the occupant and ornament of a 'gilded saloon,' have found a preliminary pleasure in dilating upon his earlier and humbler position as an errand-boy in a drawing academy. The contrast was effective, picturesque--dramatic. Contemplate this scene of gloom and degradation; now turn to this other canvas, all sunshine and prosperity. Is not the comparison impressive? But then it ought to be true.

This black and white view of the vicissitudes of Cosway's career is due, in the first instance, to Mr. J.T. Smith, engraver, antiquarian, and author of the _Life of Nollekens_ and other books. Mr. Shipley, from Northampton, brother of the Bishop of St. Asaph, and founder of the Society of Arts, had established a drawing school at No. 229 in the Strand. Cosway, when quite a lad, says Smith, obtained the notice of Shipley, and was engaged by him to attend in the studio and carry to and fro the tea and coffee with which the housekeeper of the establishment was permitted to provide the students at a cost of threepence per head. Nollekens and the father of Smith were among the students, and good-naturedly, the story goes on to say, gave the boy Richard Cosway instruction in drawing, and encouraged him to compete for the prizes he afterwards obtained from the Society of Arts. These particulars probably Smith obtained from his father or from Nollekens--if indeed they be not wholly due not so much to his own invention as to the confusion of names and misconception of incidents to which every one is liable who puts too great a strain upon his memory. Allan Cunningham, it may be observed, relates facts concerning Cosway's origin and youth which go far towards controverting the errand-boy episode in his life, as chronicled by Smith.

Richard Cosway was born in 1740, at Tiverton, in Devonshire, a county singularly productive of famous artists, having given birth among others to Haydon, Northcote, and Reynolds. The father of Cosway was the master of the grammar-school at Tiverton: his uncle was for some time mayor; and the family, originally Flemish, and engaged in woollen manufactures, was possessed of considerable property in the town and neighbourhood. To the connexion of the Cosways with Flanders was ascribed their ownership of certain valuable works by Rubens, which first lit up a love of painting in the heart of young Cosway, and made him an idle schoolboy and an indefatigable artist. The master of Tiverton school was naturally indignant at the want of scholarly application of his son and pupil; was for birching him into better behaviour, forbidding him to ply his pencil at all under heavy penalties. The boy's uncle, the mayor, and a judicious friend and neighbour, one Mr. Oliver Peard, seem to have better appreciated the situation. They interposed on behalf of the young artist, and succeeded in obtaining for him permission to make drawings during such times as he could be spared from the grammar-school. But at last it appears to be agreed on all hands that the boy must close his books: he is wilful, and must have his way--become an artist: there is no hope whatever of his succeeding in any other line of life. He is to be humoured to the top of his bent. His passion is to be cured by indulging it. If he succeeds--well and good,--there is nothing more to be said. If he fails, his failure will sober him, his friends argue: render him docile and tractable, obedient to parental commands for the future.

He was sent up to London, at thirteen, to study under Hudson, Reynolds's preceptor (and more remarkable on that account than on any other, though his merits as a portrait-painter are less contemptible than many suppose); all expenses were to be defrayed by the Mayor of Tiverton and kindly Mr. Oliver Peard. After a year under Hudson, young Cosway entered Shipley's Academy, already mentioned. Probably he was a somewhat puny, insignificant-looking lad, and was therefore made the butt and fag of the robuster students, compelled to attend upon them and obey their behests, even to performing menial offices, just as younger boys do in other academies--for might is right in the world of school--and thus Mr. Smith's errand-boy story may have originated. But it can be scarcely said to be substantiated by the further facts he proceeds to narrate: how that young Cosway in the course of a few years obtained no less than five premiums, some of five and one of ten guineas, from the Society of Arts: the first awarded when he was only fourteen years old, the last when he was under four-and twenty. The unskilled errand-boy could scarcely have received a prize instantly on his commencing to study.

Quitting Shipley's, he became for a time a teacher at Parr's Drawing School, but was soon busily employed on his own account in supplying the jewellers' shops with miniature paintings on ivory; pretty heads and fancy subjects or mythological scenes to be framed with gold or set with diamonds; the beau of the day was incomplete without a costly snuff-box adorned with a lid, the prettiness of which, perhaps, somewhat surpassed its pudicity. Cosway seems to have been just the artist to supply a demand of this sort. He was industrious, fond of money,--but rather because it ministered to habits, which were inclined to be extravagant, than for any very sordid reasons--and was without high views as to his art. He did not mind debasing it a little, accommodating his friends the shopkeepers, and filling his own pockets. And his execution was very rapid and adroit; he could put just as much work into his subjects as would give them in uneducated eyes the effect of high finish, while in truth they occupied but little of his time, and provided him with most ample profits. But, if slight, they were certainly elegant; if not very pure in art, they were unquestionably pleasing to a large and important class. The demand for specimens of Mr. Cosway's ingenious taste became at last almost in excess of his powers of supply.

First, by his snuff-box subjects, and afterwards by his portraits--on ivory or in red and black chalk--after the manner Bartolozzi had introduced--Cosway earned large sums. For many years he was reputed to have been in possession of a handsomer income than could be secured by the efforts of all his artist-brethren put together. But it must be said for him that he worked very hard. At the height of his fame he would sometimes boast as he sat down to dinner, that he had during the day despatched some twelve or fourteen sitters. He would often complete portraits at three sittings of half an hour each. But then his finish was of the slightest kind, and many of his miniatures can only be regarded, from a modern point of view, as tinted sketches, after allowance has been made for the perishable nature of the pigments he employed. He seems to have possessed a trick of enriching the colours of the eyes, lips, and cheeks of his sitters, by reducing every other hue in the picture to a cold blue-grey tone. By this system of violent contrast any hint of positive colour gained in warmth and brilliance to a remarkable degree. The miniature painter can hardly help improving and refining the subjects he deals with; for one reason, because the delicate nature of the material upon which he works, its exquisite surface and delicate texture, imparts a marked purity to all his tints. The coarsest complexion gains in lustre and smoothness when attempt is made to render it upon ivory; the dainty groundwork gleams through and gives beauty and clearness to the swarthiest hues. And then, in addition to this, Cosway had in full the portrait-painter's faculty of flattering his sitters. He could hardly fail to please them. He understood thoroughly how, while preserving a real resemblance, to catch the happiest expression; to subdue unattractive lines; to modify plain features; to conceal weaknesses; bringing out the really good points of a face; to light up dull eyes, and flush pale lips and cheeks. The faults of his portraits consist in their over-conscious graciousness; they smile and sparkle and are arch and winning to an excess that sometimes approaches inanity. And he was disposed, perhaps, to record the fashions of his time with too intense insistence. There was a rage then, as we know, for a piling up on the head of all sorts of finery: feathers, lace, ribbons, velvet hats, mob-caps, and strings of pearls. Cosway will hold back from us none of these adornments, rather he will force upon us a redundancy of them, and contemplating the aspects of the grandmothers and great-grandmothers of the present generation as they appear to us according to Cosway's art, we are led to the conclusion that the dear old ladies were in truth most killing coquettes, with quite an extravagant regard for the dictates of their fashion-books, and occupied by a passion for ogling their fellow-creatures to an extent that was decidedly reprehensible.