Romney: Woman

GEORGE ROMNEY Dalton-in-Furness 1734 – 1802 Kendal, Cumbria

Study of A Woman.

Drawing in brush and black ink. An old inscription verso, “Lady Hamilton/ by G^eo Romney.”

An extremely successful portrait painter after Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, Romney is considered to be the finest society portraitist of the 18^th century. By 1762 he had moved to London where he painted portraits and historical subjects. He quickly assimilated Reynolds grand manner and by the early 1770s he had a considerable practice in London. By 1773, however, he decided to travel to Italy to acquaint himself with earlier Italian masters and the thriving art scene in Rome where a number of artists from England – ­ among them Thomas Banks, Joseph Wright of Derby, Nathaniel Marchant, and John Browne – came in contact with the artists Henry Fuseli, Nicolai Abilgaard and Tobias Sergel. This so-called Fuseli circle in Rome was enormously influential in the subsequent careers of many English artists, among them Romney. This sheet, in particular, shows a favored style of the artist, executed with a brush or very broad pen in a rapid, almost slashing technique.

The art that resulted from this group created what may be called a Romantic Neoclassicism. It drew subjects from Antiquity, but depicted them with an often-powerful sensuousness and emotional directness not found in French Neoclassicism. The activities of the artists of the Fuseli circle had a most profound effect on English painting and drawing from the later 18^th century through the first two decades of the 19^th century.

Our drawing clearly shows Romney s participation in the interests of the Fuseli circle; it may be compared to the Orpheus and Eurydice, private collection England, [1] and to The Lapland Witches Raising a Storm, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.[2]

On his return to London in 1775, Romney s career resumed its upward trajectory; he was enormously successful as a society portraitist, but maintained an interest in myth and history painting until his death in 1802 after a long physical decline.

253 x 198 mm 10 x 7 15/16 inches