Romney, GEORGE, painter, was born at Beckside, near Dalton-in-Furness, Lancashire, on 15th December (o.s.) 1734. He was the second in a family of ten sons and one daughter, his father a clever carpenter and cabinet-maker; and after a very brief schooling he worked for ten years at his father's trade. Meanwhile he saw much of one Williamson, a watchmaker, philosopher, and alchemist; and meanwhile also he carved wood and drew. In 1755 he was articulated to a 'Count' Steele at Kendal to be taught 'the art or science of a painter;' in 1756 married Mary Abbot of Kirkland; in 1757 set up as a portrait-painter on his own account; and in 1762 came up to London alone, leaving behind wife, boy, and baby girl—the last died a twelvemonth after. Of Romney's next thirty-five years there is little to record, beyond his two visits to France (1764; 1790) and his two years' residence in Italy (1773-75), after which, for twenty-two years, he lived in Cavendish Square. He slaved at his art, and his art so far rewarded him that Lord Thurlow said, 'Reynolds and Romney divide the Town: I am of the Romney faction,' and that in the single year 1786 he made by portrait-painting 3500 guineas. Of all his sitters the most celebrated is Lady Hamilton (q.v.), the 'divine lady,' so Romney called her. He painted her as 'St Cecilia,' as 'Joan of Arc,' as 'A Magdalene,' and in fully thirty other characters. The loveliest of them all, 'A Bacchante,' was lost at sea on its way back from Naples; but 'Sensibility,' sold originally for 100 guineas, fetched £3045 in 1890. Miss Sneyd as 'Serena' is another of his masterpieces, and so also is 'The Parson's Daughter' since 1879 in the National Gallery).
The thirty-five years went by, and at last, in 799, Romney returned to Kendal, to die there on 15th November 1802. Finis! No; the true finis is given by Edward FitzGerald: 'How touching is the close of Romney's life. He married at twenty-one, and, because Sir Joshua and others had said that marriage spoilt an artist, almost immediately left his wife in the north, and saw her but twice till the end of his life, when old, nearly mad, and quite desolate, he went back to her, and she received him, and nursed him till he died. This quiet act of hers is worth all Romney's pictures.'
See FitzGerald's Letters (p. 182); Lord Tennyson's 'Romney's Remorse;' Lives of the painter by Hayley (1809), and his son, the Rev. John Romney (1830); Hilda Gamlin's Romney and his Art (1894); Espinasse's Lancashire Worthies (1877); and Lord Ronald Gower's Romney and Lawrence ('Great Artists' series, 1882), with a catalogue by Algernon Graves of more than 300 of Romney's works, portraits mostly, but several also 'fancy subjects' for Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, &c.