hildren. He returned home to die in 1799,
and in the meantime saw his wife but twice. The year after his arrival in
London he carried off the fifty-guinea prize on the subject of the "Death
of Wolfe" from the Society of Arts. Through the influence of Sir Joshua
Reynolds this was reconsidered, and the fifty-guinea prize was awarded to
Mortimer for his "Edward the Confessor," while Romney was put off with a
gratuity of twenty-five guineas. This produced a feud between the two
artists. Romney showed his resentment by exhibiting in a house in Spring
Gardens, and never sending a picture to the Academy, while Reynolds would
not so much as mention his name, but spoke of him as "the man in Cavendish
Square." This was after his return from the Continent; but before going to
Italy he was distinctly the rival of Sir Joshua, so much so that there
were two factions, and Romney's studio, in Great Newport Street, was
crowded with sitters, among whom was the famous Lord Chancellor Thurlow,
whose full-length portrait is the pride of its possessor. At this time he
was making about twelve hundred pounds a year, a very good income for
those days. In 1773 he went to Rome with a letter to the Pope from the
Duke of Richmond. His diary, which he kept for a friend, shows how
conscientious and close was his observation and how great his zeal. He
made a copy of the "Transfiguration," for which he refused one hundred
guineas, and which finally sold for six guineas after his death. On his
return to London in 1775 he took the house in Cavendish Square, where he
had great success. He painted a series of portraits of the Gower family,
the largest being a group of children dancing, which Allan Cunningham
commended as being "masterly and graceful." Some of his portraits have a
charm beyond his rivals. He painted portraits of Lady Hamilton, the friend
of Lord Nelson--"the maid of all work, model, mistress, ambassadress, and
pauper"--scores of times, and in different attitudes and a variety of
characters, as Hebe, a Bacchante, a Sibyl, as Joan of Arc, as
"Sensibility," as a St. Cecilia, as Cassandra, as Iphigenia, as Constance,
as Calypso, as Circe, and as Mary Magdalen, and in some of these
characters many times. He often worked thirteen hours a day, and did his
fancy sketches when sitters disappointed him. He would paint a portrait of
a gentleman in four sittings. He was extremely fond of portraying
Shakespeare's characters, and contributed to the Shakespe