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PROPERTY FROM THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF ART, SOLD TO BENEFIT THE ACQUISITIONS FUND
Donated in the early 20th Century to the Carnegie Museum of Art, this fine group of British portraits is being offered on the art market for the first time in almost one hundred years. Bequeathed by Mrs. J. Willis Dalzell in memory of her late husband, the Pittsburgh public utilities and iron manufacturing magnate J. Willis Dalzell, to the then Carnegie Institute, these portraits reflect the high regard in which the emerging American elite held their aristocratic British predecessors. Works by Romney, in particular, found a warm reception with American collectors of this era as European dealers brought large volumes of portraiture from then destitute British estates to the newly wealthy in America. Wide circulation of 18th-century mezzotints also contributed to the favor of Romney and his contemporaries, driving and expanding the American market for such works.
George Romney's largely self-taught aesthetic perhaps echoes the self-made work ethic that characterized American culture of the 18th and 19th Centuries. It was only after his apprenticeship with Christopher Steele that Romney's works exhibited the more painterly style of his French 18th-century counterparts, such as Watteau. In intervals throughout his career, Romney's works also made reference to the Old Masters; his paintings after Poussin and Wouwerman certainly indicate a more scholarly approach to his subjects. The Dalzell portraits, all completed in Romney's later years, show the refined and thoughtful approach to his sitters that caused his contemporaries to designate him as the primary rival of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Romney's status as one of the masters during the 'Golden Age' of British portraiture surely appealed to the re-imagined peerage of the American gilded age.
A man with an unfaltering civic sense, Dalzell and his wife contributed their time and wealth to the city of Pittsburgh during its time of greatest prosperity, and are recalled as 'admirable' citizens in 'all relations of life' by one of Dalzell's biographers. A man of great social and political standing in his own community, it is particularly appropriate that Dalzell was drawn to subjects of status from an earlier time. Perpetuating her husband's charitable sensibilities, Mrs. Dalzell's donation of the Romney portraits to the Carnegie Institute was a thoughtful and fitting act of memoriam. Christie's is pleased to offer this group of portraits, representing not only this venerable collection, but the emergence of the American collector of British art.
George Romney (Dalton-in-Furness 1734-1802 Kendal)
Portrait of John Mills, half-length
Details
George Romney (Dalton-in-Furness 1734-1802 Kendal)
Portrait of John Mills, half-length
oil on canvas
30 x 24¾ in. (76.1 x 63 cm.)
Portrait of John Mills, half-length
oil on canvas
30 x 24¾ in. (76.1 x 63 cm.)
Provenance
Sir Henry Edwards, Yorkshire.
with Lewis & Simmons, London, 1919.
with John Levy Galleries, New York, where purchased by
Mrs. J. Willis Dalzell, Pittsburgh ($14,000), by whom gifted to
The Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, 1925.
with Lewis & Simmons, London, 1919.
with John Levy Galleries, New York, where purchased by
Mrs. J. Willis Dalzell, Pittsburgh ($14,000), by whom gifted to
The Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, 1925.
Literature
(Possibly) H. Ward and W. Roberts, Romney. A Biographical and Critical Essay with a Catalogue Raisonné of his Works, London and New York, 1904, II, pp. 104-06.
B. Maclean-Eltham, George Romney. Paintings in Public Collections, Kendal, 1996, p. 43.
B. Maclean-Eltham, George Romney. Paintings in Public Collections, Kendal, 1996, p. 43.
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