He was a precocious young man, the third son of John Romney, a cabinet maker from Lancashire. He withdrew from school at the age of 11 and joined his father's business where he proved a most talented ability with working wood. He particularly enjoyed making violins which he played throughout his life. From 15 he learnt art informally from a local watchmaker, John Williamson and it was not until the age of 21 that any formal training began when he was apprenticed to Christopher Steele in Kendal at the age of 21.

Romney married in 1756 to Mary Abbot and quickly had a young son. He had initially been seperated from them due to his work commitments in York but Steele agreed to release him to continue on his own and he was soon reunited with his family. He worked as a portraitist, landscape and historical painter in Kendal until 1762 when he made the decision to move to London.

Early on he clashed heads with the establishment and Joshua Reynolds, who, it is said, was directly behind the decision to reduce the second prize for the Royal Society of Arts competition from 50 guineas to 25 for his painting of "The Death of General Wolfe" in 1763. His decision to ignore the RA and its advantages of patronage (as well as royal patronage) did not set him in good stead and his early years in London were ones of great hardship.

He visited Paris in 1764 to study the old masters there and again won second prize at the RSA in 1765. In 1769 he was to paint a breakthrough portrait of Sir George Warren which was exhibited at the Free Society of Artists which cemented the foundations for his future reputation. Eventually he started to exhibit at the Chartered Society of Artists from 1770.

In 1772 he set for a Grand Tour of France and Italy with his great friend, the miniaturist, Ozias Humphrey. They travelled all over Italy spending 18 months in Rome, where they met Pope Clement XIV and spent much time studying Raphael.

On his return to London in 1775 he was quite in debt, owing largely to being encumbered with his brother Peter's debts. However, the Duke of Richmond came to his assistance and along with his circle of friends commissioned a large number of portraits. It was also at this time (1782) that he met Emma Hamilton who was to become his muse and the subject of over 60 paintings in some of his most powerful work.

In 1799 he returned to Kendal exhausted and in ill-health. His wife who had remained devoted to him despite almost forty years of absence nursed him in his final years until his death in 1802.

Note: This portrait was reproduced as a stipple engraving by C. Watson for Hayley.

The life of Emma Lady Hamilton, whose beauty and vivacious character took her from humble origins as the daughter of an illiterate blacksmith to become the mistress and later wife of the diplomat, antiquarian, collector and vulcanologist Sir William Hamilton (1730-1803), the King's Minister Plenipotentiary at the Bourbon Court in Naples, and later mistress of the celebrated naval hero, Lord Horatio Nelson, was both extraordinary and, in the end, tragic. The beauty that captured the hearts of both Hamilton and Nelson exerted a similarly magnetic attraction on the imagination of several of the leading artists of the day and none more than Romney. Romney had first met her when she was still the mistress of his friend, the Hon. Charles Greville (1749-1809), a keen art collector who was later responsible for introducing her to his widowed uncle Sir William Hamilton. Greville had brought her to Romney's studio in Cavendish Square to sit for the portrait that was engraved as Nature (Frick Collection, New York) and she soon became Romney's favourite muse and the model, providing the inspiration for dozens of fancy portraits drawn from the worlds of literature and mythology. In this portrait Romney portrays Lady Hamilton as Cassandra, daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy in Greek mythology. Cassandra's beauty caused the God Apollo to grant her the gift of prophecy, but when she failed to return his love Apollo put a curse on her so that no one would ever believe her predictions. Combining deep understanding with powerlessness, Cassandra exemplified the tragic condition of mankind. William Hayley (1745-1820), the celebrated poet and author of Life of Romney, in whose possession this picture is first recorded, was a close friend of the artist, to whom he had been introduced in 1776, and was also admired by Lady Hamilton who claimed to have heeded the advice that he gave in his didactic poem Triumph of Temper, of 1781, in which he sought to teach young women the virtues of a pleasant nature.