Memoirs of the Life and Works of George Romney

Written by his son John Romney (1757–1832) and published in 1830, nearly three decades after the artist's death, this collection of anecdotes and biographical episodes traces the extraordinary career of George Romney (1734–1802), highlighting his early training as a joiner in the family firm, his artistic education at the hands of the disreputable Christopher Steele, and his eventual fame as a portraitist of fashionable London. Recollections of personal and professional encounters with such influential figures as Laurence Sterne and Richard Payne Knight provide insights into the circumstances that inspired Romney's most famous works. Including an engraving of his self-portrait of c.1784, a section on his brother and fellow painter Peter Romney (1743–77), and a list of the designs and studies which were donated in 1817 to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, this work reveals much about the eighteenth-century art world, its patrons and its pitfalls.