Last updated at 15:14, Friday, 15 June 2012

IF Mitt Romney beats Barack Obama to be president of the United States it will generate great interest in his ancestral home of Dalton and in distant painter relative George Romney.

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While the Georgian society artist was born and is buried at Dalton, he spent the period from 1742 to 1755 in a cottage perched on the top of Ormsgill quarry.

This set of pictures show Romney’s early home and museum and is being sold as part of a larger collection of Edwardian picture postcards at the Barrow salesrooms of Furness Auctions on Sunday.

It seems the painter’s home was quite a tourist attraction 100 years ago with people taking teas, admiring copies of Romney’s work in a small museum and taking in the views of the Lakeland hills and Walney channel.

The back of one of the Edwardian postcard notes: “George Romney was born at Beckside, near Dalton, on the 15th of December 1734.

“His associations with High Cocken, Barrow, were during the early period of his life.

“His father, John Romney, a cabinet-maker and joiner, removed from Dalton to Barrow in the year 1742, and George, who was then not nine years of age, and was completing his schooling at Dendron, a village near Dalton, assisted him in his trade.

“The workshop was on the site of the present museum.

“After passing 13 years in these surroundings, his artistic genius had so far developed as to induce him to go to Kendal and apprentice himself in 1755 to a travelling portrait painter named Steele.

“In 1756 George Romney married Mary Abbot at Kendal. From Kendal the young Romney went to reside with Steele in York.

“He went to London in 1762 and eventually became the celebrated and world-renowned artist.

“George Romney’s first portrait of Lady Hamilton was painted in 1784.

“Romney was then 50, and Lady Hamilton, nee Emma Lyon, 19 years of age.

“Upon his health failing in 1799 George Romney rejoined his wife at Kendal, where he died on the 15th of November 1802 and was buried in the old churchyard at Dalton.

“In the museum adjoining the ‘home’ there are coloured engravings, photogravures and photographs of some of Romney’s notable works, and of the artist’s grave in Dalton churchyard.

“Three of George Romney’s pictures were sold at Christies in 1909 for over £5,000 each. The highest price obtained by Romney during his lifetime for a portrait was £130.”

First published at 13:42, Friday, 15 June 2012
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk