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| You are in National Portrait Gallery | What's On | George Romney | Special Features: Biography | |||||||||
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| George Romney (1734-1802) - Biography | |
| 1734 | Born in Dalton-in-Furness, Cumbria |
| 1755 | Apprenticed to Kendal-based itinerant portraitist, Christopher Steele. |
| 1756 | Marries Mary (Molly) Abbott. |
| 1757 | Breaks apprenticeship
with Steele. John Romney, his son is born |
| 1759-60 | Makes reputation in north-west when he paints various members of two prominent Lakeland families. |
| 1762 | Paintings such
as Memories of Windermere c.1761, included in lottery to raise
funds both for his family and his move to London. Romney moves to London without his family. |
| 1765-67 | Returns twice to
the north-west, where he was still highly regarded, to paint
commissions. When he returns to London the second time, it is
last time he is believed to have seen his wife for over thirty
years. Moves to new lodgings in Great Newport Street and joins the artists' community around Covent Garden |
| 1768-69 | Paints The Leigh Family and The Warren Family which establish Romney as a chief rival to Reynolds. |
| 1770 | Starts to exhibit with the Incorporated Society of Artists and joins the Board of Directors. |
| 1773-75 | Visits Italy. |
| 1775 | Moves to London and into studios in Cavendish Square, part of the newly fashionable West End area. |
| 1776 | Receives patronage
of Lord Gower. The Leveson-Gower Children, 1776-77 is painted.
Makes friends with the poet William Hayley |
| 1780 | Horace Walpole notes Romney's rise to fashion. |
| 1781 | Introduced to Emma Hart, later Lady Hamilton. |
| 1786 | Attends inaugural dinner of Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery. |
| 1790 | Completes Act I of Shakespeare's Tempest for the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery. Visits Paris during French Revolution and meets Jacques Louis David. |
| 1794 | Illness seriously curtails portrait practice for the first time. |
| 1799 | Romney returns, in ill health, to Kendal and his wife Molly. |
| 1802 | Dies in Kendal, Cumbria. Buried in Dalton. |
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All images and text are subject to copyright
protection. 22 August 2008 |
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