English Portrait: RILEY, or RYLEY, John, English paints b. Bishopsgate, London, 1646; d. there, Marc 1691. He studied painting with Isaac Fuller an with Gerard Soest. Although a fine artist, Rile did not come into prominence until after the deal of Sir Peter Lely. Then Thomas Chiffinch, th keeper of the king's jewels, sat to him and like the portrait so much he showed it to the king Charles II gave him several commissions, ani eventually sat to him for a portrait. It is sai( that the king rather disconcerted the artist bj exclaiming, "Is this like me? Then, odd's fish I'm an ugly fellow."
In his experimentation, unfortunately, Reynolds often used impermanent mediums and resorted to a thick impasto which has cracked with time. As a draftsman, too, he had his limitations. Nevertheless, he is still ranked as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of English portrait painters. John Ruskin could say of him, in the second lecture of Two Paths: "Considered as a painter of individuality in the human form and mind, I think him, even as it is, the prince of portrait-painters. Titian paints nobler pictures and Vandyck had nobler subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as Sir Joshua did into the minor varieties of human heart and temper."
In 1969, by appointment of President Nixon, Romney became secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
ROMNEY, rom'ne, George, English painter: b. Beckside, near Dalton-in-Furness, Lancashire, Eng., Dec. IS, 1734; d. Kendal, Eng., Nov. 15, 1802. His father was a cabinetmaker, and the boy learned this trade, but he also taught himself drawing and woodcarving and at 19 was apprenticed to a portrait painter at Kendal named Steele. In 1757 he entered a career as portrait painter, and after local success went to London (1762), leaving his wife (whom he married in 1756) and his two children in Kendal.
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