10. Lady Craven (1778) ” ” 32 11. Mrs. Mark Currie (1789) ” ” 36 12. Portrait of a Lady and Child (1782) ” ” 40 13. Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante (1786) ” ” 44 14. Emma, Lady Hamilton _National Portrait Gallery_ 46 15. Miss Benedetta Ramus _Viscount Hambleden_ 48 16. Portrait of Romney by Himself (unfinished) (1782) _National Portrait Gallery_ 52 GEORGE ROMNEY That Reynolds and Gainsborough were the two greatest portrait painters in England during the latter half of the eighteenth century is a proposition which no one is likely to question. Both had qualities which raised them far above the general, and considerably higher than even the foremost of their competitors; and though preference for the work of the one or the other of them is often as much a matter of taste as of opinion, the pre-eminence of the two is beyond dispute. When we come to fill the third place, however, the question is not so readily settled. There are many candidates who are, or ought to be, in the running; and although the fashion of the present time may send up the prices of now one now another beyond all that is reasonable and sensible, it would be rash to say that the most popular has the best right to the position. Only last year, for example, a new planet swam into the dealers’ ken, a portrait of _Benjamin Franklin_, painted in 1762 by Mason Chamberlin, one of the original members of the Royal Academy, realising the extraordinary figure of two thousand eight hundred guineas; a figure which, as the _Times_ felicitously observes, “places the artist on an auction level with Reynolds and Gainsborough.” Judged by the fickle standard of the auction room, Raeburn, at the present moment, would have precedence over Hoppner, and Hoppner, unless I am mistaken, over Romney. But who can say whether before another season is over, the merits of Lawrence or Beechey, West or Copley, may not come up in the market, and impress an uncritical public with ideas of beauty and genius which have hitherto escaped their notice? In my own opinion, George Romney has better claim than any of the others to be considered next to Reynolds and Gainsborough as a portrait painter, inasmuch as he seems to me to have exhibited more consistently the variety of qualities necessary for excellence in that particular branch of his art.