1734 -1802 · Great British portrait, London and studies of Emma Hamilton

Sensitive faces, quick draping, theatrical poses and countless studies of Emma Hamilton make George Romney one of the great British portraitists of the 18th century.

George Romney was born in Dalton-in-Furness, Lancashire, in 1734. The son of a cabinetmaker, he received local training from the traveling portrait painter Christopher Steele before settling in Kendal. Ambitious, he left his family for London in 1762 and first sought to establish himself in history painting. Several awards from the Society of Arts attested to this aspiration, but portraiture quickly became the center of his career. Between 1773 and 1775, a trip to Italy allowed him to study Raphael, Titian, Correggio and the great Roman decorations. Back in London, Romney set up his studio in Cavendish Square and became, with Reynolds and Gainsborough, one of the portrait painters the most requested from British society. Lady Elizabeth Stanley, Admiral Sir Chaloner Ogle or the many models whose names have sometimes been lost are captured in an elegant pose, with a precisely observed face and clothes treated more freely. Romney avoids the Royal Academy and maintains an independent position, organized around a very productive workshop. His meeting in 1782 with Emma Hart, future Lady Hamilton, transformed his imagination. He drew and painted her dozens of times as Circe, bacchante, saint, magician or figure of Shakespeare. Lady Hamilton in Circe is therefore not just a portrait: the gesture, the look and the drape transform the model as a mythological character, on the border of stage and expressive study. Thousands of drawings bear witness to historical, literary and religious projects, many of which were never completed. In his Self-Portrait, the more reserved gaze reveals the artist behind this worldly machine. Romney returned to the North in 1799, weakened by illness, and died in 1802. His work united social resemblance, theatrical invention and drawn research of exceptional magnitude. The "George Romney" selection notably compares Lady Hamilton as Circe and Lady Elizabeth Stanley. His reading favors drawing.

Romney constructs the portrait between two speeds: the face retains identity, while the drape and the gesture free the model towards theater and myth.