George Romney shied away from public exhibitions and preferred keeping his privacy over advancing his popularity.

As a child, Romney preferred to draw from the pictures in school textbooks instead of actually studying them, so his father pulled him out of school at age eleven to work for him. Romney still devoted all of his free time to drawing and after receiving his first portrait commission his father decided to encourage his abilities and found an artist for him to apprentice with.

Said artist, Christopher Steele, had a large impact on his life, but not how his father would have predicted. Romney learned some techniques from him, but it wasn’t long before his teacher decided to elope with one of his other pupils and asked Romney for help in making the arrangements.

Romney assisted, but in the process caught a bad fever. A young lady by the name of Mary Abbott nursed him back to health and they fell in love. As soon as Romney was healthy he married her and they were together for the rest of his life...sorta. At first glance, their relationship reads like Nightingale syndrome-turned-abandonment, but based on the letters exchanged during their years apart there was never any loss of affection between them. There were scandalous whispers about his relationship with his muse Emma Hart, but there’s no evidence the two ever shared more than a close friendship. But, over the course of thirty-six years, Romney only visited his wife twice.

Though they remained apart, Romney never failed to send her money to support herself even when he was struggling financially. He started out his career with meager earnings and used what little he had to go seek inspiration around Europe. He visited Paris and nearly starved himself to avoid going broke. Luckily, by the time he returned requests for commissions began flooding in.

What set Romney apart from his London contemporaries was that he didn’t seem to care how the public saw him and didn’t actively seek out popularity or a place in high society. So in the wake of all these commissions and potential earnings, he chose to buy a house and went about renovating it. He began refusing commissions until he deemed his studio space complete and suitable for clients. So his bills went up, but his income had halted.

In another stroke of luck, Romney had friends with good connections. The Duke of Richmond took a liking to him and delighted in having the artist to himself for a time. Shortly after the Duke took interest in him, other commission requests returned. Buying and renovating homes for himself became a bit of a hobby for Romney, but despite the high price tag of his new pasttime Romney still rarely sent his work for public exhibitions.

The Royal Academy repeatedly tried to get him to exhibit some of his pieces, but he always turned them down. Some artists resented him for this. Joshua Reynolds in particular hated Romney, seeing him as a rival whom he enjoyed irritating whenever possible. Reynolds referred to him as the “man of Cavendish Square” thinking it a clever insult to pretend he forgot his name and yet still remember where he lives.

While some artists chose to charm and flatter to move up in society, Romney continued to keep to himself while maintaining some popularity until his death. Some of Romney’s artist friends like Jeremiah Meyer and Angelica Kauffman tried to convince him to exhibit his work with the Royal Academy, but were unsuccessful.

Other of Romney’s friends had his back, though. For instance, his friends knew that Romney’s main artistic inspiration was Raphael. One such friend used his connections to get Romney special permission from Pope Clement XIV to set up scaffolding in the Vatican to study Raphael’s work up close.

Towards the end of his life, Romney did reunite with his wife. As his health began to fail she nursed and cared for him the rest of his days.