The year 2002 marks the bicentenary of the death of George Romney, one of the key figures in eighteenth-century British art. During the 1770s and 1780s, Romney was the leading rival of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, attracting patronage for his skillful combination of elegance and informality, confident draftsmanship and sensuous handling of paint. One hundred years later in the great boom period for the collection of English paintings,his portraits were considered blue-chip collectors' items. Henry E. Huntington assembled in the early twentieth century one of the largest holdings in the United States of Romney's grand manner portraits. But as grand manner tastes waned, Romney fell from favor. One can now claim him as a forgotten genius of British art. Alongside his successful career as a portraitist, Romney indulged his real ambition to paint elevated historical and literary subjects: an aspiration shared by many of his contemporaries. A superlative draughtsman, his spontaneous and expressive sketches are a testament to his innovation and creativity. His mature drawings had a significant influence on younger contemporaries such as John Flaxman and William Blake. This is the first exhibition to survey the whole range of Romney's art, from his grandest full-length portraits to the tiny thumbnail studies preserved in sketchbooks.

GEORGE ROMNEY'S EARLY CAREER

Romney was born in 1734 on the Lake District coast of England in Dalton-in-Furness, Lancashire. From 1755 to 1757 he was apprenticed to Christopher Steele, a roving provincial portraitist who had been trained by the noted French artist Carle van Loo. Romney's early style, with its bright, fresh color and precocious handling of drapery, reflects this background. He was also influenced by the northwest's leading artist, Arthur Devis, who painted conversation pieces: small-scale, whole-length portraits in carefully observed and detailed settings, reflecting middle-class pursuits and sensibilities.

Working in Kendal and Lancaster, Romney became a favorite portraitist with local patrons, presenting his sitters in attractive, closely observed studies. He also made a handful of more elaborate, experimental paintings such as King Lear in the Tempest Tearing off his Robes, the first product of his lifelong fascination with Shakespeare. In 1762, ambitious to succeed as a history painter, Romney left the northwest for London. Exchanging a life of local celebrity for one of relative obscurity and intense competition in the capital, he suffered a period of financial hardship as he struggled to make his reputation. Few paintings survive from his first five years in London and he was twice forced to return to the northwest, where he could count on receiving portrait commissions.

TOWARDS THE GRAND MANNER

Returning to London after his second trip home in 1767, Romney took up new lodgings in Great Newport Street, near Covent Garden. Moving to the center of the art world marked Romney's ambition. It was the turning point in his career. For the first time he had a painting room large enough to carry out whole-length portraits in the grand manner popularized over the previous decade by Joshua Reynolds.The Leigh Family, a remarkable combination of conversation piece and classical frieze, was the first fruit of this move. It was exhibited to great acclaim at the Free Society of Arts in 1768.

Over the next four years Romney embarked on a sequence of ambitious works designed to make a strong public impression when they were shown at London exhibitions. They reveal him to be a worthy candidate for election to the new Royal Academy of Arts, but he was never invited to join.

THE EARLY 1770s

Following the death of portraitist Francis Cotes in 1770, Romney began to emerge as the leading rival to Sir Joshua Reynolds, who had been elected first President of the Royal Academy in 1768.Mrs. Yates as the Tragic Muse , exhibited in 1771, reveals Romney's mastery of the vocabulary of neo-classicism, in which pose, costume, props and even the handling of pictorial space combine to give the work a fashionable suggestion of classical antiquity. However, many of the potential patrons most likely to recognize Romney's adeptness with this style would have known that he had not yet studied its sources at first hand, in Italy. Aware of this, Romney left London for Rome in March 1773.

Romney spent over two years in Italy, honing his appreciation of the great artists of the Renaissance and indulging his love of antique sculpture. He returned on London in July 1775 with his confidence in drawing the human figure enhanced and his vocabulary of poses enriched. The influence of his Italian journey is immediately apparent in the first major portrait he undertook after his return, Elizabeth Warren as Hebe.

CAVENDISH SQUARE

A few months after returning from Italy, Romney took out a lease on expensive premises in fashionable Cavendish Square. He quickly attracted many new patrons and within three years was the most sought after portrait painter in London.The Leveson-Gower Children, his portrait of the five youngest children of one of the best-connected aristocrats in England, was a conscious demonstration of his artistic abilities. The painting's sophisticated, visually arresting design set the tone for many of his later portraits.

Less intimidating than the rather exclusive Reynolds or Gainsborough, Romney also appealed to those outside the fashionable elite, the inexperienced or first time buyer, members of the professional classes and country gentlemen. Perhaps most significantly, his prices consistently undercut those of his rivals. A workaholic, his high productivity further advanced his career.

Commissions continued steadily well into the 1790s, despite Romney's radical political sympathies, which became clear after the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. Increasingly he complained of being "shackled" to portraiture, and struggled to break free to paint imaginative literary and historical pictures. The plays of Shakespeare remained his favorite source.

EMMA

Emma Hart (1765-1815), a Lancashire blacksmith's daughter, first sat to Romney in 1782. Her vivacious personality, statuesque beauty and, above all, her ability to assume theatrical expressions and poses captivated the artist. Over the next four years, Romney used her as a model for a sequence of stunning portraits, such as Emma Hart in a Straw Hat, as well as fancy portraits and literary subjects with dramatic heroines. His fascination with Emma made it increasingly hard for him to engage creatively with more routine commissions, thus decisively altering his portrait practice.

In March 1786 Emma's lover Charles Greville sent her to Naples to stay with his uncle, Sir William Hamilton, the diplomat and collector of antiquities. When she returned to London five years later, it was in order to celebrate her marriage to Sir William. On this visit she was once more commandeered by Romney for dozens of sittings, but after the bridal couple returned to Naples, Romney never saw Emma again. The loss of Emma accentuated the chronic depression he experienced in the final years of his career.

ROMNEY'S DRAFTSMANSHIP

Unlike many portrait painters, Romney left a large legacy of drawings. He started to draw long before he began his apprenticeship as a painter and in his declining years remained a powerful draftsman after mounting depression and infirmity had sapped his will to paint. His approach to painting was underpinned by the language of drawing, laying stress on outline, direct expression, simplicity and spontaneity. For Romney, drawing was also to some extent an autonomous pursuit, more concerned with development and transition than final resolution.

Four chief stylistic phases are distinguishable in Romney's drawings. Up until the end of the 1760s a delicate pencil technique, the expression of a slightly tentative artistic personality, predominates. This gave way around 1770 to more confident drawings in pen and ink, in a rapid, jagged style. After 1775 and his visit to Italy, Romney began to use sepia and later black wash over lyrical pen outlines, concentrating powerfully on essentials and eliminating incidental detail, as seen in his Study of a Striding Female Figure, perhaps for "Emma Hart as Circe" . Later still, from around 1790, Romney's drawing became even more intense. He returned increasingly to pencil with an obsessive repetition of complex figure motifs.

THE CARTOONS

Drawn in black chalk on six or nine sheets of paper glued together at the edges, the cartoons are a unique aspect of Romney's work. The sculptor John Flaxman described them as "examples of the sublime and terrible, at that time perfectly new in English art." Romney began making them in the mid-1770s, either towards the end of his stay in Rome or immediately after his return to London. Romney continued to produce these cartoons over the next ten years, exploring subjects from both classical and modern literature in works such as Nature Unveiling herself to the Infant Shakespeare,

. Romney's son, who visited his father at this time, recalled that the cartons were drawn at night, as a form of relaxation from the rigors of portrait painting by day. They acted as a release for Romney's energies and were the expression of his most powerful creative urges.

A fully illustrated catalogue of the exhibition written by the curator, Alex Kidson, is available in the bookstore, as well as a separate volume of essays, edited by Kidson,which explores various aspects of Romney's career. Presentation of the exhibition at The Huntington is made possible through the generous support of Anne and Jim Rothenberg and Marilyn and Don Conlan. In addition, it is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.