George Romney in Canada

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

Esteemed as the third most important eighteenth century English portraitist, overshadowed only by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, George Romney, 1734-1802, was a society painter, commissioned to preserve the likenesses of the elite of his day. In this collection of such examples of his work as are to be found in Canada are some 40 canvases and drawings, now housed in museums and private collections, assembled for an exhibition held in 1985-1986 at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Windsor, and the Edmonton Art Gallery, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the artist’s birth. This handsome catalogue includes various color and black-and-white reproductions of his work, a detailed chronology of his life, and a listing of works exhibited during his lifetime, with a descriptive note accompanying many of the listings. Manuscript sources are cited, as well as various exhibition catalogues and a selected bibliography, with an index of subjects and sitters.