The Gower Children. Two pencil drawings on a single sheet, recto and verso. Drawn c.1776-77. The paper watermarked “VG” Note: The drawings depict the children of Granville.2nd Earl Gower. Viscount Trentham and after created 1st. Marquess of Stafford. In 1833 the family were conferred with the Dukedom of Sutherland. From left to right they are, Lady Georgiana, Lady Susan, The Hon. Granville and Lady Charlotte Leveson-Gower. The girl on the right is Lady Anne, Lord Gower’s Daughter by his second wife. These two drawings are amongst Romney’s earliest thoughts/designs for his masterpiece. The Gower Family. This life-size oil painting now hangs in the Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal located in the English Lake District. Other drawings pertaining to this oil can be seen in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, the Ashmolean, Oxford and the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. Eight drawings by George Romney having the same watermark are held by the Yale Center for British Art at New Haven, Conn., USA. George Romney, who became one of the most important and popular portrait painters of the eighteenth-century. Was born in Dalton-In-Furness in the Lake District. He began his career in Kendal, studying under the local portrait painter, Christopher Steele. In 1756 he married Mary Abbot. In 1762, Romney left his family and travelled to London to further his career. In 1764, he travelled to Paris and remained there for a short period. In 1769 he painted the first of his large-scale conversation pieces, a work depicting Sir George Warren and his family. In 1772 he travelled, with his friend and fellow artist, Ozias Humphry to Italy. He arrived in June and was received in audience by the Pope, Clement X1V. He remained in Italy for eighteen months studying the works of the Artists of the Italian Renaissance. On returning to London he moved to a residence in Cavendish Square, where he received commissions from the nobility and gentry. In 1782 he met Lady Emma Hamilton who became his muse. He painted over 60 portraits of her in various guises. He remained working in London until 1799 when ill-health brought about his return to his wife in the Lake District. He died in 1802. Works by George Romney can be seen in the world’s leading museums: National Gallery of Ireland; National Portrait Gallery, London; Louvre Museum, Paris; Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, and Getty Center, Los Angeles.