English School, circa 1773

Painted on a Roman canvas, this enigmatic portrait is thought to represent the celebrated English artist George Romney when in Rome. Romney travelled to Italy with his close friend and fellow artist Ozias Humphrey between 1773 and 1775. He spent over eighteen months in Rome and also visited Florence, Bologna and Venice. Close to the style of Anton Raphael Mengs, who painted a number of other visiting British artists in Italy such as Richard Wilson (National Museum of Wales) and Gavin Hamilton, it was possibly painted by one of the many expatriate English artists working in Rome at the time. Romney had considerable contact with the English artistic community in Rome, particularly Henry Fuseli whose work had probably the most profound and lasting influence on him as an imaginative draughtsman.