Bell's Miniature Series of Painters
GEORGE ROMNEY
BY
ROWLEY CLEEVE
LONDON
GEORGE BELL & SONS
1908
First Published, 1901.
Reprinted, 1904, 1908.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Some of the Chief Books on Romney
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Mrs. Robinson as Perdita ... Frontispiece
The Countess-Duchess of Sutherland
George Granville, afterwards Duke of Sutherland
THE LIFE OF GEORGE ROMNEY
George Romney was a Cumberlandlad, born in 1734, of parents who were inhumble circumstances living at Dalton in theFells.
His father was an ingenious man who livedon his own farm as a yeoman, but who followedalso the pursuits of a joiner and cabinet-maker,and who was one of the first persons in thenorth to see and make use of the newlyimported wood mahogany, from which he madea chest of drawers out of a sailor's chest broughtfrom the West Indies.
Romney inherited much of his father'singenuity, and as a lad set about making a fiddle,which he completed in later years and retainedall his life. It was a sound instrument of reallygood tone, and the artist himself played wellupon it.
As a lad Romney was sent to a small localschool; but he made very slight progress withhis studies, and preferred to spend his time insketching or in copying the pictures that hefound in papers or books.
His father, finding that he was making so littleprogress, took him away from school before hewas eleven, and placed him in his own workshop,where he soon began to learn how to plythe tools and to make a creditable use of hisnew accomplishment.
Still, however, his spare time was filled up bypainting, and he made very careful copies of theillustrations in a monthly magazine which oneof his father's workmen, who boarded in thehouse, lent him regularly as it appeared.
He was a