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 constant. His want of education may have had something to do with his distaste for society at large. He was unable to write English with any approach to correctness, or even to spell the most ordinary words; he was consequently very reluctant to write at all, but his natural refinement and intelligence atoned for these shortcomings, and made him, in his happier days, a pleasant and even a brilliant companion. The seclusion in which he lived was partly due, no doubt, to his absorption in his art and his constitutional shyness of disposition. That he was capable of inspiring strong affection is evident from the terms in which Cowper, Blake, Flaxman, and Cumberland wrote of him, to say nothing of the somewhat incoherent eulogies of Hayley. In No. 99 of the ‘Observer,’ Cumberland thus sketched his character under the name of Timanthes, Reynolds and West figuring in the same conceit as Parrhasius and Apelles: ‘This modest painter, though residing in the capital of Attica, lived in such retirement from society that even his person was scarce known to his competitors. Envy never drew a word from his lips to the disparagement of a contemporary, and emulation could hardly provoke his diffidence into a contest for fame which so many bolder rivals were prepared to dispute.’ After Romney's death, his fame underwent remarkable vicissitudes. In the sale at Christie's in April 1807 of the pictures and sketches left in his studio at Hampstead, extremely low prices were realised. Caleb Whitefoord, who was among the purchasers, bought the portrait of Lady Almeria Carpenter for a guinea and a half. The reaction against the popularity he enjoyed during his lifetime persisted until about 1870, when, owing chiefly to the winter exhibitions at Burlington House, a higher opinion of his powers began to prevail. Once the tide had turned, it flowed with extraordinary force, until pictures which would have sold for a few pounds in the first half of the century brought in small fortunes to their owners, and their author took a place beside Gainsborough and Reynolds in the affections of the collector. And this was not a mere matter of fashion. Few painters have been more essentially artistic than Romney; all his better portraits embody a pictorial scheme. He was a good draughtsman, a sound painter, an agreeable colourist. He had an eye for woman's beauty, and could enhance it. His slightest sketches have a vivid consistency which is almost peculiar to themselves. His vision was so artistic that his work was complete at every stage. Even the empty canvas about his unfinished heads seems to form an indispensable part in a coherent work of art; and so, although he lacks the depth and intellectual energy of Reynolds, the keen sensibility, the adorable delicacy, and the delicious colour of Gainsborough, he wins his place in the little group of Englishmen who formed the only great school of painting of the eighteenth century.

The most interesting, and apparently the most characteristic, portrait of Romney is a head in the National Portrait Gallery, bought at the sale of Miss Romney's effects at Christie's in May 1894. It was painted in 1782. Romney also painted a portrait of himself and his father, which belongs to the Earl of Warwick.

Romney's habit of painting his pictures entirely with his own hand relieved him from the necessity of having a large staff of assistants and pupils. He trained several scholars, however, the best known of whom were James Lonsdale [q. v.] and Isaac Pocock [q. v.]

(1758–1832), the painter's only surviving child, was educated at Manchester grammar school, whence he proceeded to St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1778. He was elected a fellow on 15 March 1785, and senior fellow on 11 March 1806, taking holy orders and graduating B.A. in 1782, M.A. in 1785, and B.D. in 1792. He chiefly resided at St. John's College till 1801, filling many college offices. From 1788 to 1799 he was non-resident rector of Southery, Norfolk, and in 1804 became rector both of Thurgarton and Cockley Clay, Norfolk. Meanwhile his father, wishing to secure a home for his family near the Cumberland lakes, arranged with John about 1800 to purchase some land at Whitestock How, near Newton-in-Cartmel. There, after his father's death, John built from his own designs a substantial house, known as Whitestock Hall. This was his residence from the autumn of 1806, when he married. His mother, the painter's widow, removed at the same time to Whitestock Cottage, on the estate, where she died on 20 April 1823. In 1830 John published his elaborate memoir of his father, and he died at Whitestock Hall on 6 Feb. 1832, being buried in the neighbouring churchyard of Rusland. He had already presented some of his father's drawings to his old college (St. John's, Cambridge), to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and to the Liverpool Art Gallery. Other portions of his own and his father's property were sold by auction in 1834. By his wife, Jane Kennel of Kendal (1796–1861), whom he married at Colton on 21 Nov. 1806, he left three daughters and two sons; of the latter, George died