Charlotte (Pilford) Grove

This portrait of Charlotte Grove provides valuable insights into the tactics by which a fashionable Georgian artist coped with a booming portraiture business. The pose is a conventional one that Romney employed frequently during this period. The handling, which lacks the elegant confidence that characterized the painter at his best, is further evidence of a system designed to fulfill many commissions. In the studios of sought-after portrait painters, the artist often concentrated on the rendering of the head and allowed the rest of the canvas to be executed primarily by assistants.