Mid-Georgian Portraits Catalogue

William Romaine (1714-1795), Evangelical divine

Evangelist,of Huguenot descent; b. Hartlepool; lecturer at St Dunstan’s in the West 1749-95; preacher at St George’s, Hanover Square, 1750-c.1755 and chaplain to Lady Huntingdon; rector of St Anne’s, Blackfriars, 1766-95; a prolific author, his works culminating in The Life of Faith, 1795; officiated at the marriage of the artist John Russell in 1770.

‘his stature was of the middling size, his visage thin and marked ... his eye was quick and keen, yet his aspect benign, and frequently smiling ... he wore a suit of blue cloth always, a grey wig without powder, and generally but a poor one ... his stockings were coarse and blue, as his cloaths’ (Thomas Haweis, 1797).

This extended catalogue entry is from the out-of-print National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Mid-Georgian Portraits 1760-1790, National Portrait Gallery, 2004, and is as published then. For the most up-to-date details on individual Collection works, we recommend reading the information provided in the Search the Collection results on this website in parallel with this text.