George Romney Art

This stunning British 18th century Old Master portrait oil painting, with exceptional provenance, is by noted artist George Romney. It was painted in 1788, commissioned by James Evelyn of Felbridge as it is of his younger daughter Anne, aged 20 years old. James was a Doctor of Law and Anne's mother was his second wife, Jane. Felbridge house, Anne's home, was in the village of Godstone in Surrey. This superb oil painting is a seated portrait of Anne, wearing a white dress with a green sash, her forearms exposed and her hands in her lap. Anne is blessed with the most wonderful long auburn curly hair and is visually stunning. Her body is partly turned away from the artist/viewer and she is slightly gazing down at us with confident, clear eyes. Anne is pictured in a landscape with a dramatic sky behind her. Romney's brushwork on her dress, hair and the background is superb. The delicate detailing of her facial features is also stunning. Sometimes Old Master portraits can be a little staid, but this one of Anne with her wild auburn hair and bold look is just magnificent. This is a fantastic example of George Romney's work and of an 18th century British Old Master with exceptional detailed provenance. Name plate states: Anne, younger daughter of James Evelyn of Fellbridge Esq. 1788, aged 20. Romney. Provenance. With Charles Cecil Cope Jenkinson, 3rd Earl of Liverpool (1784-1851) With The Hon. Henry Berkeley Portman (1860-1923), Later 3rd Viscount Portman; with Emma, Viscountess Portman (1862-1929) By 1926; with her daughter Lady Moyra Dawson-Damer (1897-1962) Thence by family descent. Painted in 1788. There are various labels verso. Mentioned in Lord Hawkesbury's Catalogues of Portraits at Compton Place and at Buxted Park, in Sussex, 1903, p.18, no. 3, at Buxted Park, as in the 'Dining Room, South Wall'. Further Bibliography: Gower (R. S.) Romney, London, 1904, p. 175 Kidson (Alex) George Romney, A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015, I, p. 205, no. 422 (illus).Ward (Humphrey) and Roberts (William) Romney: A Biographical and Critical Essay, London: T Agnew & Sons, 1904, p. 51 Condition. Oil on canvas. Image size 30 inches by 24 inches and in good condition. Frame. Housed in an ornate gilt frame with name plate, 37 inches by 31 inches and in good condition. George Romney (1734-1802) was born in Dalton-on-Furness, Lancashire, on 15 December 1734, the third of the eleven children of John Romney and Anne Simpson. Leaving school at the age of eleven, he worked for eight years in his father's cabinetmaking workshop before being apprenticed to a local painter, Christopher Steele, with whom he served for two years, from 1755 to 1757, in Kendal, York, and Lancaster. He married a Kendal girl, Mary Abbot...

Oil Painting Pair circle of by George Romney "Portraits of a Lady and Gentleman" 1734 - 1802 Romney was a leadway society portrait painter of the Georgian ear...

George Romney (1734-1802) Portrait of a Gentleman, traditionally identified as Edward Addison, Esq., c.1780s Oil on canvas In a period carved and gilded swept frame 76.3 x 63.2 cm.; ...

DESCRIPTION: Perhaps the best Romney in private hands. If Vogue Magazine existed in the late 18th century, this image of Lady Caroline Price would be ...

This beautifully fluid ink and brush drawing was made by George Romney in the 1780s and may well relate to the powerful sequence of portraits of Emma Hamilton, in various mythologica...

Collections: J. Goodfriend, USA. Brown wash and pencil on laid paper Framed dimensions: 13.25 x 11.75 inches This powerful drawing was made at the time that Romney was painting the famous group portrait of the Gower Children now in Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal. Romney was a bold and incisive draughtsman who made numerous rich brown ink studies, principally for historical compositions; by contrast, comparatively few studies linked directly to his portraits survive. The existence of a group of studies for the Gower Children underscores its importance to Romney. The sitters were the five youngest of the eight children of Granville, 2nd Earl Gower who, at the time the portrait was commissioned, was President of the Council in Lord North’s government and one of the best-connected and most influential people in England. The present drawing which is a large scale treatment of the composition in its final form perfectly distils Romney’s conceit: the younger children dancing whilst their elder sister, in the guise of a Bacchante plays the tambourine. The bold and dramatic study underlines both the artistic confidence and classical grandeur Romney gained during his trip to Italy between 1773 and 1775. The commission from Granville, 2nd Earl Gower to paint five of his children came shortly after Romney’s Continental tour. The initial idea, as represented by the present drawing, seems to have been to paint Lady Anne, the figure on the right of the composition playing the tambourine, who was the youngest of Gower’s first four children by his second wife Lady Louisa Egerton and who married the Rev. Edward Vernon Harcourt, later Archbishop of York, with three of her younger half-siblings by Gower’s third wife, Lady Susanna Stewart: at the left Lady Georgina, who became Countess of St Germans following her marriage to the Hon. William Eliot; at the right Lady Charlotte Sophia, later Duchess of Beaufort and in the centre Lady Susanna, later Countess of Harrowby. Romney added a fifth child to the finished portrait, Gower’s son: Lord Granville, later created Viscount Granville and Earl Granville. In Italy Romney had produced a large number of studies of classical antiquities and old master paintings. The commission from Gower offered Romney the opportunity to explore a complex multi-figural group, putting into practice the kind of ambitious classical quotations that Reynolds was currently exploiting. In 1773 Reynolds had completed the remarkable group portrait of the Montgomery Sisters, now in the Tate Gallery, London, which showed them adorning a herm of the Roman god Hymen; the composition used a garland to link the three figures who were shown in classical costume dancing at the foot of a Roman sculpture. Scholars have long pointed to a similar sources for the two compositions: the works of Nicolas Poussin. Whilst the Montgomery Sisters is based, in part, on a Bacchanal now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, the Gower Children has always been associated with Poussin’s Dance to the Music of Time, now in the Wallace Collection, London. It seems more likely that Romney was looking to an antique source in the form of the Borghese Dancers, a Roman relief, then in Palazzo Borghese in Rome. Romney would have seen the relief of interlocking, dancing maidens and would also have known Guido Reni’s Aurora...

Pen and ink drawing on laid paper by British master George Romney (1734–1802), depicting the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, circa 1770. Sheet measures 4.75 x 7.25...

Collections: Henry Scipio Reitlinger (1882-1950); Private collection, UK to 2019 Framed dimensions: 14.50 x 15.38 inches This drawing is one of only two known portrait drawings by Romney (as opposed to preliminary studies for portraits) and is dated by Alex Kidson as being executed no later than 1769. It is likely that the present drawing was originally part of a sketchbook, now largely dismembered (Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal), which Kidson notes, contained some of Romney’s most beautiful early drawings. This drawing, and a second sheet formerly with Andrew Wyld, have been identifying as depicting the Rev. William Atkinson...