ROMNEY, GEORGE (1734-1802), English historical and portrait painter, was born at Dalton-in-Furness, Lancashire, on Dec. 26, 1734. His father was a builder and cabinet-maker, and the son, having manifested a turn for mechanics, was instructed in the latter craft, executing carvings of figures in wood, and con structing a violin, which he spent much time in playing. He was also busy with his pencil ; and some of his sketches having at tracted attention, his father apprenticed the boy, at the age of nineteen, to Steele, an itinerant painter of portraits and domestic subjects who had studied in Paris under Vanloo. In 1756 Romney married a young woman who had nursed him through a fever, and started as a portrait painter on his own account, travelling through the northern counties, executing likenesses at a couple of guineas, and producing a series of some twenty figure composi tions, which were exhibited in Kendal, and afterwards disposed of by a lottery.
Having, at the age of twenty-seven, saved about LI oo, he left a portion of the sum with his wife and family, and started to seek his fortune in London, never returning, except for brief visits, till he came, a broken-down and aged man, to die. In London he rapidly rose into popular favour His "Death of General Wolfe" was judged worthy of the second prize at the Society of Arts, but a word from Reynolds in praise of Mortimer's "Edward the Con fessor" led to the premium being awarded to that painter, while Romney had to content himself with a donation of £50, an inci dent which led to the subsequent coldness between him and the president and prevented him from exhibiting at the Academy or presenting himself for its honours.
In 1764 he paid a brief visit to Paris, where he was befriended by Joseph Vernet; and his portrait of Sir Joseph Yates, painted on his return, bears distinct traces of his study of the works of Rubens then in the Luxembourg Palace. In 1766 he became a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, and three years later he seems to have studied in their schools. He removed to Great Newport Street, near the residence of Sir Joshua, whose fame in portraiture he began to rival in such works as "Sir George and Lady Warren" and "Mrs. Yates as the Tragic Muse"; and his professional income rose to £1,200 a year. But this marked increase in his popularity had the effect of enlarging his ambitions. Realizing the need for more thorough knowledge, he was seized with a longing to study in Italy; and in the beginning of 1773 he started for Rome with Ozias Humphrey, the miniature painter. On his arrival he devoted himself to study, raising a scaffold to examine the paintings in the Vatican, and giving much time to work from the undraped model, of which his painting of a "Wood Nymph" was a result At Parma he studied Correggio.
In 1775 Romney returned to London, establishing himself in Cavendish Square, and resuming his work as a portrait painter. The admiration of the town was divided between him and Rey nolds. Romney became acquainted with Hayley, his future bi ographer, then in the zenith of his popularity as a poet. His influence on the painter seems to have been far from salutary. He encouraged Romney's excessive and morbid sensibility, and tempted him to expend his talents on ill-considered, seldom-com pleted paintings of ideal and poetical subjects. About 1783 Romney was introduced to Emma Hart, afterwards celebrated as Lady Hamilton, and she became the model from whom he worked incessantly. He painted her as a Magdalene and as a Joan of Arc, as a Circe, a Bacchante, a Cassandra; and he con fessed that she was the inspirer of what was most beautiful in his art. But her fascinations had their share in aggravating that nervous restlessness and instability, inherent in his nature, which finally ruined both health and mind.
In 1786 Alderman Boydell started his great scheme of the Shakespeare Gallery, apparently at the suggestion of Romney. The painter entered heartily into the plan, and contributed his scene from the Tempest, and his "Infant Shakespeare attended by the Passions," the latter characterized by the Redgraves as one of the best of his subject pictures. Gradually he began to withdraw from portrait painting, to limit the hours devoted to sitters, and to turn his thoughts to mighty schemes of the ideal subjects which he would execute. Already, in 1792, he had painted "Milton and his Daughters," which was followed by "Newton making Experiments with the Prism." He was to paint the Seven Ages, Visions of Adam with the Angel, "six other subjects from Milton—three where Satan is the hero, and three from Adam and Eve,—perhaps six of cach." Having planned and erected a large studio in Hampstead, he removed thither in 1797, with the fine collection of casts from the antique which his friend Flaxman had gathered for him in Italy. But his health was now irremediably shattered. In the summer of 1799, suffering from great weakness of body and depression of mind, he returned to Kendal, where his faithful and long-suffering wife received and tended him. He died on Nov. 15, 1802.
See the Memoirs by William Hayley (1809) and by the artist's son, the Rev. John Romney (183o). In the fully illustrated George Romney, by Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower (19o4), pictures, mainly studies, are reproduced not elsewhere to be found. But the great work upon the artist is Romney, by Humphry Ward and W. Roberts (1904), containing 7o illustrations, a biographical and critical essay, and a catalogue raisonne of the painter's works. See also Arthur B. Chamberlain, Romney (Iwo).