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Lot 50

George Romney
(Beckside 1734-1802 Kendal)
The Penitent Magdalene

4 December 2019, 15:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £11,312.50 inc. premium

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George Romney (Beckside 1734-1802 Kendal)

The Penitent Magdalene
oil on canvas
60.3 x 48.6cm (23 3/4 x 19 1/8in).

Footnotes

Provenance
The artist's lottery, Kendal, March 1762, no. 13
With Pierre Dutal, New York, circa 1930
Sale, Skinner, Boston, 14 July 2012, lot 778A, where purchased by the present owner

Literature
J. Romney, Memoirs of the Life and Works of George Romney, London, 1830, p. 25, no. 13 (list of paintings to be disposed of in state lottery)
H. Gamlin, George Romney and His Art, London, 1894, p. 14
A.B. Chamberlain, George Romney, London, 1910, p.31
J. Watson, The Paintings of Emma Hart (Lady Hamilton) by George Romney: A Study of their Significance om Relation to his Historical Works, M.A. Thesis, 1974, p. 46
M. Pointon, Strategies for Showing, Oxford, 1997, p. 232
E. Barker, 'George Romney's Early Candlelight Paintings' in Transactions of the Romney Society, vol. V, 2000, p. 28
R. Asleson, 'Antiquity, Melancholy and Morality in Romney's Portraiture' in Those Delightful Regions of Imagination: Essays on George Romney, London and New Haven, 2002, p. 173
A. Kidson, George Romney, A complete catalogue of his paintings, New Haven and London, 2015, vol. III, p. 844, cat. no. 1850, ill.


Romney was known to have owned a series of prints which he copied in oil with his own artistic interpretations. Some of these works formed the selection of 20 fancy pictures and copies of old master paintings which Romney exhibited and offered as prizes in a lottery at Kendal Town Hall in 1762. The funds he raised enabled the artist to move to London in March of the same year.

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