Posted on 03/04/2020 3:03:32 PM PST by mairdie
George Romney was a British portrait artist (1734-1802). The music is Beethoven's Symphony 2, D-major, Opus-36, 2nd movement, Larghetto. Performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker, Karajan conducting. Roughly chronological.
PING to British portraiture to Beethoven
Related to Mittens?
What a great show! Thanks.
Mitt’s ancestor was the first cousin of this George Romney, so they shared a grandfather. But don’t hate him for that.
Yes. From Wikipedia: “George Romney is a kinsman of American businessmen and politicians George W. Romney (1907–1995) and Mitt Romney (born 1947); their ancestor Miles Romney was George Romney’s first cousin.”
So very glad you liked it.
Since I’ve just spent one incredibly long and hard week making this, I think I’ll put off watching your video until I’ve had time to enjoy my own.
He too painted the gorgeous Emma Hamilton.
Thanks for sharing this... extremely well done, and the perfect prescription for this week’s nuttiness relief.
You’re most welcome. And it has been a strange week.
Around 1782 he met Emma Hart before she married Lord Hamilton. She was being kept by someone who wanted to marry someone rich, so was dumping her on Hamilton without her knowledge. Hamilton collected beautiful things and she was. They fell in love and the last portrait Romney painted of her was the afternoon after she married Hamilton. He was older and was agreeable when she started an affair with Admiral Nelson. They had children together. She died, as with most of these situations, poor. Romney was fixated on her and painted her between 40 and 60 times. Went into a depression when she left town.
Art major?
Very nice.
University of Chicago - Art History/Physics. 3 1/2 years of the physics major, 1 1/2 of Art History. But I did study at Taft Studios there. Mother was an art major there and grandmother studied at the Art Institute when Taft was teaching.
From the note I sent to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts docent friend:
I’m preferring his early work. But the later! Do you see the colors that Turner eventually used in Romney’s backgrounds!
He’s got one pair I didn’t use that are almost identical. Wonder what the backstory is. Guessing someone didn’t like their portrait as one of the two is more balanced.
And he’s got a version of blue boy in pink that has almost the same pose and clothes, made the same year, but the kid is chunky and it’s terrible next to Blue Boy.
Sometimes his heads are on wrong. Sometimes they’re too narrow. And the necks look like he was fixated on mannerism. And sometimes you’d swear they’re all the same person and then he comes up with total individuality.
Basically chronological over a couple years.
FUN!
Thank you. Sincerely.
His portraits have an approachable aspect, an easy intimacy, that reminds me of Mary Cassatt’s work.
Also similar to Cassatt, Romney’s figures have a luminous quality from deep within. Look at them. Don’t many of the figures look like delicate lamps? It’s a creative way to feature them without using too many distracting colors.
His painting technique looks somewhat similar to the eggshell tempera Dutch method of Jan Van Eck, but with heavy applications of paint.
Almost an impasto manner as seen on the faces.
I flipped out over her as a college student in nyc when I saw a portrait of her at the Frick. In London several years ago I visited a home where she posed for a portrait. She ended up very badly this poor lady.
Eggshell tempera is really hard. You build up the shadows backwards. The great thing about the lab class was that we were made to create pieces in every technique we studied.
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