If Mitt Romney had beaten Barack Obama in 2012, he would have the distinction of being the only American president with an important Old Master painter in his ancestry, having descended from George Romney, one of the finest portraitists in eighteenth-century England and the subject of the new exhibition, Romney: Brilliant Contrasts in Georgian England, at the Yale Center for British Art.
To have been one of the most eminent portraitists in eighteenth-century England is no small distinction. Romney was second only to Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough in this genre, and as such he was one of the inventors of that surprisingly durable sub-genre, the British aristocratic portrait.
Although this may not sound like a great achievement, you have only to enter any university library or hall of power to see, for better or worse, a specimen of the object in question. But as the Yale exhibition proves, the somewhat debased depths to which the genre has sometimes sunken today give little hint of the beauty, subtlety, and power that it once possessed, not least in the work of George Romney. A good example of his art, and of the genre in general, is his portrait of Catharine and Caroline Thurlow. A sonata in beige and gray, this painting depicts the two sisters standing before a harpsichord as one of them plays while the other, her head resting on her hands, listens contentedly.
Admittedly more adventurous is Romney ’s Conversation, a portrait of his brothers Peter and James from a few years earlier. Set between an easel and an indigo curtain, the scene depicts one brother, seated with a drawing board on his lap and clad in a puce coat, explaining some point of art to his standing, green-robed sibling.
Among the revelations of the Yale show are drawings that attest to Romney’s desire—ultimately
unavailing—to establish himself as a history painter, and his sideline in building and playing musical instruments. Some of his creations in that field are also on view in the exhibition. The show also includes a work by well-known contemporary painter Kehinde Wiley, who has created some of the more original recent variants on the classic portrait. There is some measure of hope that the genre, far from being dead, may have better days ahead.
—James Gardner
Romney: Brilliant Contrasts in Georgian England • Yale Center for British Art • to September 14 • britishart.yale.edu
