After George Romney

Dyer, London, 1929;

With Knoedler;

Sydney Shoenberg;

By whom gifted to the Saint Louis Art Museum, 1952;

By whom anonymously sold ("Property of a Midwest Museum"), New York, Sotheby's, 7 November 1984, lot 175;

Thereafter acquired by the present owner.   

The Frick Collection: An Illustrated Catalogue, Princeton 1968, vol. I, p. 110 (as a copy);

D. Buttery, "George Romney and the second Earl of Warwick," in Apollo, August 1986, p. 108 (as a preliminary study by Romney);

K.S. Wood, "Romney Revealed: Re-Discovering Lord Warwick's Children," in Transactions of the Romney Society, vol. 12, 2007, pp. 9-10, reproduced p. 14, fig. 6 (as George Romney(?));

A. Kidson, George Romney: Complete Catalogue of his Paintings, New Haven and London 2015, vol. II, pp. 618-619, cat. no. 1385c, reproduced in black and white (as not autograph and as a later replica derived from the large original). 

This young, elegantly attired boy also appears in George Romney's large Portrait of Henrietta, Countess of Warwick, and Her Children, painted between 1787-1789 and today in the Frick Collection, New York.¹  Instead of standing next to his sister, Lady Elizabeth Greville, the young boy here is depicted in a lush garden near a plinth and a vase filled with flowers. Although Buttery considered the present canvas to be a preliminary study by Romney, that the young boy rests his left hand on a hoop, a detail very likely conceived by Romney at a relatively late stage for the original, further suggests to Kidson that this is a later replica.

The identity of this young boy has generally been given to Henry Richard Greville, Lord Brooke (b. 1779-1853), the eldest son of George Greville and his second wife Henrietta. Recently, however, Kidson proposed that instead this might be their second son, Charles Greville (b. 1780-1853), who would have been seven years old when Romney started his group portrait.²  

1. Inv. no. 1908.1.107, oil on canvas, 202.6 by 156.2 cm.  

2. For further discussion, see Kidson 2015, vol. II, pp. 616-618, cat. no. 1385