Gents Mag 1809 p.1143
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Gentleman's Magazine 1809 p.1143
eighty guineas; half whole-length, sixty; half-length, forty; a kit-cat, thirty; and for a head, twenty guineas. It is very remarkable, however, that he had never become a member of the Royal Academy, nor exhibited in its rooms. For the first, Mr. Hayley has very satisfactorily accounted; and his advice to Romney on the subject appears to us most judicious. The following reflections and anecdote need no apology: "The emoluments of portrait-painting may be said both to support and ruin a great Artist; they afford him affluence, but they impede his progress in that higher field of imagination which promises a richer harvest of delight and honour. Romney felt and lamented the fetters of his profession, and often pleased himself with a prospect of shaking them off; but he was not aware of the infinite efforts required to break the golden fetters of custom. He was not dazzled or enslaved by the gold he gained, for he had a spirit superior to such bribery, and he often threw money away as rapidly as he acquired it: but he really had a pleasure in painting a new face, exclusive of all pecuniary considerations; and his heart was so tenderly sympathetic, that, if he had resolved most solemnly never to paint another portrait for any fresh sitter, yet a lover, begging a likeness of his favourite nymph, or a mother requesting a resemblance of a darling child, might have melted, in a few monents, his sternest resolution. If the facility with which he sympathized in the feelings of those who equired his attention often led him to find in portrait-painting much cordial gratification, unmixed with ideas of interest; on the other hand it tormented him exceedingly when he was desired to preserve an exact likeness, and yet to bestow considerable character on a countenance to which Nature had given very little or none. On such occasions he was apt to be very faithful in his representation of life; and once, when the portrait of a simple gentleman was sent back to him, to receive a more animated countenance, I remember to have seen the Artist in much ludicrous perplexity from having vainly tried to make a simpleton, most truly delineated, retain his own features and yet look like a man of sense. I could not, on this occasion, apply to him an admirable compliment addressed by Dryden to his friend Kneller: 'Thus thou sometimes art forc'd to draw a fool; But so his follies in thy posture sink, The sensless idiot seems at last to think.' For, in the portrait alluded to, a weakness of understanding was still visible, after repeated endeavours of the mortified Painter to give his too faithful inanimate image the requested air of intelligence."When the Boydell Shakspeare was projected, Romney contributed his aid; and Mr. Hayley has here favoured us with a very curious and interesting history of the rise of that splendid undertaking. The idea of painting from his favourite Shakespeare was very alluring to the spirit of Romney. He had a quick and keen relish for the beauties of that wonderful Poet, although his own fancy was so volatile, and his mode of reading so desultory, that it may be questioned if he ever read, without interruption, two acts of the dramas that he most cordially admired. The feelings of Romney often displayed, in the strongest point of view, the astonishing force of habit. It seems suprising that a man who, with a pencil in his hand, could attend to a single subject for many hours, without any symptoms of fatigue, should feel his powers of attention very rapidly exhausted if he exchanged his pencil for a book or a pen. The progress of his pictures for the Shakspeare Gallery is minutely and critically detailed by his Biographer, at whose house in Sussex the Artist first meditated upon the various pictures from Shakspeare which he hoped to produce, and there formed the first sketch of his scene from the Tempest. After he had finished this important picture, in 1790, he was induced to visit Paris again, with Mr. Hayley and another friend; and this journey affords Mr. Hayley many opportunities to introduce those traits of friendship and critical digressions which constitute the merit of this volume, and cannot fail to be highly interesting to future (especially young) artists, whose proficiency Mr. Hayley seems every where to consult with parental affection. In 1791 we find Romney engaged on a Joan of Arc, a Magdalen, and a Bacchante, for the Prince of Wales, and Constance for the Shakspeare Gallery. His intimacy, at this time, with the celebrated and engaging Lady Hamilton appears to have been of most pleasing importance to him as an Artist. He was frequently permitted to avail himself of the taste |
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