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Property of a familyThe Romney sketchbooks and loose sheets in lots 100-104 were collected by Patricia Jaffé, who was the leading figure in Romney studies in the UK in the second half of the 20th century. Her interest in the artist was kindled initially when, on a Fulbright scholarship to Smith College, Northampton, Mass. in the early 1960s, she encountered the huge collection of his drawings owned by the local collector J. Richardson Dilworth. She exhibited a selection of these drawings at Smith College Museum of Art in 1962, her catalogue for which was essentially the first serious contribution to the study of Romney's graphic work. On her return to Cambridge she began to grapple with the huge collection of Romneys in the Fitzwilliam Museum, which resulted in her second exhibition, held at the museum in 1977, again accompanied by a state of the art catalogue. Without her sustained efforts to identify the often recondite subjects of Romney's drawings, present-day knowledge of the artist would be very much the poorer.The Romney drawings that she acquired for herself reflect Jaffé's interest in the wellsprings of his creativity. She owned the remarkable four-leaved screen whose sale to Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal Christie's negotiated in 2020-21: a unique first locus for Romney's engagement with the classical female figure that was to be the cornerstone of his fashionable society portraiture in years to come. She also owned a remarkably well preserved late sketchbook (now in the Huntington Art Collections, San Marino, Ca.) that shed an almost unique light on the ways Romney developed his subjects, working on several over the same short period in clusters.Further sketchbooks, dating from earlier in the artist's career, feature in the present group. Lot 101 (12 pages, drawings chiefly in ink) in a modern re-binding undoubtedly contrived by Jaffé herself, chiefly contains studies for The Warren Family (Private Collection) which was exhibited by Romney in 1769. The considerable variation in the grouping of the figures and their individual poses suggests that the contents of the sketchbook represent a relatively early stage in the developing of the final composition, in which alternative possibilities were being sifted; with the appearance on pp. 7v and 8r of a design very close to the finished painting (Romney tended to work inwards from both edges of a sketchbook simultaneously) implying a creative breakthrough. Equally fascinating is p. 1r, where an early idea for the figure of Lady Warren, on the left, elides straight into the figure, on the right, of Mrs Scott Jackson (National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C.), also exhibited in 1769. This fluidity is another key aspect of Romney's creative process, as he considers multiple uses for posed figures.A second sketchbook, with only a paper cover (lot 104) is if anything an even more valuable source for our understanding of Romney's early career. These drawings were made in the early 1760s, just after he arrived in London from the north-west. The large number of caricatured têtes d'expression on the one hand reflect his youthful close familiarity with the work of Lebrun, and on the other recall the satirical heads that one contemporary source remembered Romney drawing in fits of depression at the start of the 1760s. But they also witness Romney beginning to put his mastery of expression to use in historical compositions. A number of these heads, along with some of the composition sketches, undoubtedly relate to his lost masterpiece The Death of General Wolfe, while others must belong with other lost compositions such as the illustrations to Tristram Shandy or The Death of King Edmund.Lot 102 was exhibited at Smith College in 1962 (cat. 64, pl. 20) when it was still in the Dilworth collection; and was presumably either gifted to, or bought by, Jaffé at the time. She identified the crouching figure as Woman Lamenting; to the present writer it appears more likely to depict a male, with a distinct, if schematic resemblance to Romney himself. In this context, the appearance on the reverse of a consoling semi-naked female figure, her hand squeezing her nipple as if for a Roman Charity, has striking psychological overtones; Jaffé however, may have been correct, from other sources, to catalogue this drawing as The Grecian Daughter, which was the title of a tragedy by Arthur Murphy published in 1772.Two further loose drawings are of particular interest. As with the crouching figure, the Medea Slaying a child (the present lot) was exhibited at Smith College in 1962 (cat. 44, pl. 26), again from the Dilworth collection and again presumably acquired by Jaffé at the time. Both drawings bear the stamps of the original huge Xavier Haas collection of Romney drawings, dating back to the late 19th century, whose dispersal to numerous collectors and institutions in the first half of the 20th century and ultimately to Dilworth himself Jaffé elucidated masterfully in the catalogue. (Her dating of this drawing to 1781, however, seems on the late side: the nature of Romney's handling of sepia wash as well as his interest in the subject of Medea surely place the sketch a few years earlier.)Lastly, also included in the present lot, there is the double-sided sheet on which the recto depicts a single draped female figure, and the verso a crowd scene. The former would seem to be a study for his major portrait Mrs Yates as the Tragic Muse (rather than the contemporaneous, and undeniably closely-related Melancholy, as Jaffé believed). On the reverse is a sketch for The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots, with the doomed queen in the centre, the executioner's block to her left, and the tiny figure of the contemptible executioner squatting in the front left-hand corner. A flying angel (first encountered in Romney's graphic work here, and to morph into the figure of Ariel in his Shipwreck Scene in Shakespeare's Tempest fifteen years later) floats overhead to escort the queen to heaven; and is separately studied at upper right and overleaf. The numbed seated figure studied at upper left, and again overleaf, may be for the figure slumped in a chair at the right of the group composition. This is by far the most elaborate of Romney's known designs for the subject, which otherwise concentrate on only a few figures. Typically, no painting of it emerged, and the composition seems to have elided into the better-known Accusation of Susanna, in which a large crowd of onlookers seems to have been part of the conception from the outset.We are grateful to Alex Kidson for his help in preparing this catalogue entry.
GEORGE ROMNEY (DALTON-IN-FURNESS 1734-1802 KENDAL)
Study for 'Medea slaughtering her children' and A study for 'Mrs Yates as the Tragic Muse' (recto); and Study for 'The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots' (verso)
细节
GEORGE ROMNEY (DALTON-IN-FURNESS 1734-1802 KENDAL)
Study for 'Medea slaughtering her children' and A study for 'Mrs Yates as the Tragic Muse' (recto); and Study for 'The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots' (verso)
the first pencil, pen and brown ink, brown wash; the second pen and brown ink
13 3/4 x 11 3/4 in. (35 x 29.8 cm.); 6 3/8 x 7 5/8 in. (16.2 x 19.4 cm.)
(2)
Study for 'Medea slaughtering her children' and A study for 'Mrs Yates as the Tragic Muse' (recto); and Study for 'The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots' (verso)
the first pencil, pen and brown ink, brown wash; the second pen and brown ink
13 3/4 x 11 3/4 in. (35 x 29.8 cm.); 6 3/8 x 7 5/8 in. (16.2 x 19.4 cm.)
(2)
来源
i) Xavier Haas (L.4541).
Richard Dilworth.
Patricia Jaffé, and by inheritance to the present owners.
ii) Patricia Jaffé, and by inheritance to the present owners.
Richard Dilworth.
Patricia Jaffé, and by inheritance to the present owners.
ii) Patricia Jaffé, and by inheritance to the present owners.
展览
i) Northampton, Massachusetts, Smith College, An Exhibition of Drawings by George Romney, May - September 1962, no. 44.
荣誉呈献
Annabel Kishor
Specialist