Day 234 - Romney and Reynolds

January 18, 2021

Gallery 615 carries me across the Channel to England in the 1700s. .  Most of the paintings in the room are portraits of aristos and other people wealthy enough to commission likenesses of themselves and their families. From the looks of it, 18th century Britain is a nation of men who are fond of their horses and dogs, women with elaborately curled and powdered coiffures, and rosy-cheeked children. 

The painting to which I'm most drawn is a self-portrait by George Romney.  About 30" high and 26" wide and painted in oil on canvas, the work dates to 1795, when the artist was 61. He shows himself in three-quarter view, from the chest up, against a dark background, so that our attention immediately goes to the sitter's face and his cravat, the only elements of color in the composition. The artist's son described his father's visage as showing "a certain expression of languor that indicates the approach of disease,"  but I don't read it that way; I would describe the painter's expression as "quizzical." What iI like about the portrait is its immediacy and the lack of an effort on the artist's part to glamorize himself: His face is round, his noise pointy, his hair unkempt. 

I've always thought of Sir Joshua Reynolds as a painter of saccharine images. So I'm surprised by how much I like his 1787 work, also in oil on canvas, entitled "Lady Smith (Charlotte Delaval) and Her Children (George Henry, Louisa, and Charlotte)." In the middle ground of this sizable painting (perhaps 56" high by 48" wide) is a large tree whose branches are barely indicated and in the far distance a hilly landscape. The figures, all crowded into the foreground, form a triangle the apex of which is Lady Smith's hat; Reynolds deftly conveys its ostrich plumes with a few quick strokes  The mother seems to occupy a different psychological space than her children; she looks beyond them, as if absorbed in her own thoughts. The children, on the other hand, are all involved with each other: One little girl lifts her younger brother in her arms. The other girl gazes up at her siblings; her back is to the viewer, so that we catch only a glimpse of her of her upturned face, This arrangement strikes me as unusual and adds to the painting's charm.  The children aren't smiling, exactly, but they seem to look out at us with suppressed merriment, their expressions suggesting the freshness and exuberance of childhood (or at least, the childhood of the privileged).