George Romney
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George Romney began his artistic career in the town of Kendal, in the north of England, and in 1757 established his first studio there. It was here that he received many of his earliest commissions, and as the Reverend John Romney writes about the citizens of Kendal (in George Romney, 1830, p. 20):
“Indeed, there was a general feeling in his favour: and every individual of any consequence in the town and neighbourhood, felt a personal participation in the anticipated celebrity of a youth, who had sprung up, as it were, from the bosom of their society.”
Among these early patrons of Romney were members of several branches of the Wilson family. The commissions executed by Romney for the Wilsons include a portrait of Colonel George Wilson of Abbot Hall leaning against a rock with three spaniels, one of Colonel Wilson’s wife, one of his daughter, and a portrait of the Reverend Daniel and Mrs. Wilson. Several of these pictures remained in the Kendal Town Hall and at Dallam Tower into this century.
Provenance
EX COLL.: the sitter on July 17, 1764; by descent to Eleanor Wilson, later Braithwaite, daughter of the sitter; by descent in the Braithwaite family, to Brigadier General Wilson Garnett Braithwaite, C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., Camberley, England, great great grExhibitions
Kendal Town Hall, Kendal, Westmoreland, England, before 1902 - until at least 1910Literature
Sir Herbert Maxwell, GeorgeRornnev (1902), p. 21 /1Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower, George Romney (1904’), p. 10 1/
Arthur B. Chamberlain, George Romney (1910), pp. 27-28 1/ Witt
Library Microfiche, Box 2131/32, no. 2935 ii Frick Art Reference
Library Photo No. 221-6h