ROMNEY SKETCHBOOKS IN PUBLIC COLLECTIONS INTRODUCTION TO THE ONLINE EDITION The Romney Society is thrilled to be able to provide this catalogue of Romney Sketchbooks in Public Collections online. Naturally, since the publication of the catalogue in print, as Transactions 8 (2003), more sketchbooks have come to light. These have been added to the catalogue, along with entries for two of the 'Truro Sketchbooks' that did not enter public collections. Also added is an appendix of sketchbooks that have appeared on the market in recent years, which will be added to over time. All this has brought the tally of sketchbooks in the catalogue from fifty-seven to sixty-five. A figure which will no doubt rise as more sketchbooks come to light, the beauty of this online edition being that it can grow. In addition to extra entries, we have provided links to images of sketchbooks which have been photographed, in their entireties, by the institutions who own them. We will add further links to photographs as more collections undergo digitisation. INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANSACTIONS 8 EDITION This volume of Transactions was conceived as a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the foundation of the Romney Society in the autumn of 1993 and as a tribute to its first Chairman, Barry Maclean- Eltham. After completing his Romney Paintings in Public Collections in 1996, Barry began work on a sequel devoted to the sketchbooks. By the time of his death in January 1998, he had already made enormous strides. His papers contained notes on around three- quarters of the sketchbooks included here, obtained in his usual manner by methodical and energetic enquiry from the institutions concerned. The Committee agreed that completing and publishing his work would be a fitting way to mark the tenth anniversary of the Society. While we hope that we have adhered to Barry's basic conception of the project, we have not retained his own words. Nor have we attempted to be strictly consistent between ourselves. We divided the sketchbooks pretty much evenly between us and have written about them in our own way, bringing our own priorities and pre-occupations to the task. We have not attempted a catalogue raisonne. To have discussed every drawing and made every connection with known paintings would have made for a very long and unwieldy text. Instead we have aimed to provide short introductions to the sketchbooks which place them in the context of Romney's career overall. We would be the first to admit that what we have written is just a starting point, and that much more work needs to be done on the whole subject. It has not been possible for us to inspect every sketchbook personally for the purposes of this project, and we recognize the likelihood that there are omissions: indeed we have deliberately left out one or two volumes that might have been thought fit for inclusion, on the grounds that they are really re-constituted albums of drawings put together by later hands. We have also made the distinction between sketchbooks and notebooks, and excluded volumes which contain writing only and no drawings. The total number of sketchbooks catalogued here is 57 (65 for the online edition). It is tantalizing to wonder what percentage this is of the total number that Romney used. In the words of the artist's son, "it was a regular custom with Mr. Romney to make sketches for his principal works; and as most of his sketchbooks have been preserved, every picture of importance that he painted, and many that he intended, may be traced in them almost in chronological order". The idea that this description may give of a methodical artist working his way through successive sketchbooks is, as we hope to show, some way from the truth. There are certainly some gaps in the chain of those that survive. Whether the whole sequence of sketchbooks remained intact until Miss Elizabeth Romney's sale at Christie's in May 1894 is unclear (under 'Provenance' we have only noted a book's appearance in the sale if there is outside evidence such as a sale label to confirm it). The sale catalogue itself mentions only 17. It is known that more, not listed in the main catalogue but mentioned in a much rarer 'Addenda to the Catalogue', were also sold as extras to Lot 40, but these total only a further 29. It seems very likely that many more were never documented at all. Today, a number of sketchbooks must remain in private collections, while others have certainly been dismembered in their entirety. The Society would be delighted to receive information about any Romney sketchbook not included here. Yvonne Romney Dixon Alex Kidson ABBOT HALL SKETCHBOOK NO.1 Location: Abbot Hall Art Gallery Kendal. Inventory No. 1867/79. Provenance: ... Morton Morris & Co.; from whom bought in 1979 by the present owner. Description: Graphite on cream laid paper; 15 x 20 cm; 10 pages, the 8 bound pages numbered 2-9, plus 2 unnumbered loose pages; unidentified watermark incorporating a crown over shield; no binding. This sketchbook, now only a tantalizing fragment, contains some of the most beautiful of all Romney's early drawings. It is a first cousin of the Kendal sketchbook, clearly in use at roughly the same time. Although the size of the page is much smaller, individual sheets are worked in the same way, many having several small studies on each side. The drawing style is also very similar, but many of the sketches are more expressive and more fully developed than most of those in the Kendal sketchbook, so that their qualities of delicacy and jewel-like precision achieve an even greater impact. None of the subjects is immediately recognizable, although two possible identifications need to be weighed carefully. On page 5v, two studies of a partially draped, bare-breasted standing woman have been annotated in a later hand Mrs Yates. Their resemblance to the finished portrait Mrs Yates as the Tragic Muse exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1771 is tenuous, and the controlled pencil drawing style here is unlike the draughtsmanship in other sketchbooks from the early 1770s (some of which include incontestable, very different-looking studies for Mrs Yates). It thus seems preferable to argue that any similarities are fortuitous. The same view could be taken with two sketches on page 7 of a dancing nymph with cymbals. These may be an early idea for Mirth, the subject which Romney exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1770. Nevertheless, none of the women in the finished painting are playing the cymbals, and again it may be that this figure is for a totally different work. Overall, this homogenous, tightly-drawn group of drawings has the feel of belonging to an earlier phase of Romney's career. Even the putative date of 1769 which might accommodate the Mirth hypothesis feels uncomfortably late, and a tentative dating to earlier in the 1760s seems more plausible. Three subjects dominate the contents of the sketchbook. The first involves a classical male warrior figure granting clemency or pardon to a female, sometimes standing, sometimes kneeling, whose attendants cluster behind her – a Continence of Scipio-type theme. The second is a classically draped woman, whole-length, seated under a tree with a putto-like child clinging to her knee. In a sketch on the last page of the book, the child has disappeared, which may argue that this is a portrait rather than a mythological subject. Thirdly there is a standing woman, again in classical drapes, shown either whole-length or to below the knees in profile to the left, resting against a plinth. Similar subjects to all these appear in the Kendal sketchbook. It is a great pity that so many of the pages of this book have disappeared, for knowledge of what it originally contained would have clarified the relationship between the two volumes, above all from a chronological point of view. As it is, the sketchbook remains a vital source for fleshing out Romney's early career. AK ABBOT HALL SKETCHBOOK NO.2 Location: Abbot Hall Art Gallery Kendal. Inventory No. 2469/83. Provenance: … Alfred De Pass; by whom given to The Royal Institute of Cornwall, 1923; Christie’s 22 February 1966 (21); bought by Alister Mathews; … Sir John Wedgwood Bt (1907-1989); Christie’s 16 November 1982 (17); bought by the present owner. Description: Graphite sketches (with the exception of three small ones in ink) and ink manuscript on cream laid paper; 16 x 19.5 cm; 32 pages, unnumbered, remain of 69 when the sketchbook was with The Royal Institute of Cornwall, although there is some evidence that pages had been removed even before the sketchbook was with them; watermark of Britannia in roundel; board and leather binding. This is one the ‘Truro Sketchbooks’ photographed by the Courtauld Institute in 1956 (see Appendix B). The sketchbook was sold by The Royal Institute of Cornwall in 1966 after which a large number of the drawings were removed. What was left of the sketchbook was then sold at Christies in 1982, where it was bought by the present owner. Photographs of the sketchbook as it was in 1956 remain in the Witt Library and will be available online in 2018. The front cover of this sketchbook is inscribed in Romney's hand March 1790. Inside, there are numerous studies for John Howard visiting a Prison, a subject which, encouraged by Hayley, the artist presumably tackled immediately upon hearing the news of Howard's death in the Crimea in January 1790. These drawings divide into two groups: a few individual studies of the gaoler, and initial trials for the whole composition, which are carried out fairly simply.