ROMNEY, GEORGE, a celebrated English painter was born at Dalton in Lancashire, on the 26th of December 1734. At the age of twelve he was taken from school to superintend the workmen of his father, who was a builder and a farmer; and in his leisure hours he amused himself with carving, and in making a violin and other articles. The sight of some engrav ings in a magazine turned his attention to drawing, and he was put under an artist of the name of Steele, who instructed him in the rudiments of the art. Ile soon began portrait painting as a profession; and when he had realized one hundred guineas, he took thirty along with him, and leaving the rest with his wife, he set out for London, where he arrived in 1762.
He began his career by painting portraits at five guineas a head. In 1764 he went to Paris, where he studied the works of art in that capital. Upon his return to England, he obtained considerable employ.; ment in his profession, and in 1765, he got the prize from the Society of Arts for his historical picture of the death of King Edmund.
Conscious of the necessity of improving his style by the study of the ancient masters, he left an income of 2.1200 per annum, and in 1773 he set out for Rome, and spent two years in the study of his art. He re
turned to London in 1775, where he devoted himself to portrait painting. He had leisure, however, to exe cute several historical pictures, among which may be enumerated, "Ophelia," "Titania and her Indian Vo taress," "Titania, Puck, and the Changeling," " the Storm, from the Tempest," " the Cassandra, from Troi lus and Cressida," and " the Infant Spakspeare, from the Boydell Gallery." He also executed some large cartoons in charcoal, among which was one of the Dream of Atossa.
In the year 1785 he painted portraits to the value of 23635.
In 1790 he again visited Paris with his friend Mr. Bayley, and on his return in 1791, he resumed the la bours which he had some time before begun for the Shakspeare Gallery, and painted some pictures for the Prince of Wales.
In 1798, our artist retired from his profession to a house which he had built at Hampstead; but finding that his health declined, he revisited his native county in 1799, and at Kendal, where he took up his resi dence, he died in November 1802, in the sixty-eighth year of his age.