This 18th-Century Sketch by a Renowned English Portraitist Was Hiding in a Dumpster in New York
The tiny drawing by artist George Romney depicts Henrietta, Countess of Warwick. It will be sold at an upcoming auction in London
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Last year, a dumpster diver in Hudson, New York, stumbled upon an extraordinary find: An 18th-century pen-and-ink sketch by English portraitist George Romney was hidden amid the rubbish.
“When I first found it buried in the dumpster, it looked interesting but I had no idea it was nearly 300 years old,” says the anonymous Hudson resident in a statement, per Artnet’s Jo Lawson-Tancred. “After taking it home and doing some research, I couldn’t believe it. How did this mid-18th century drawing from England end up in the trash in upstate New York?”
The mystery remains as the drawing heads to London, where the auction house Roseberys will sell it on March 12. According to the lot listing, it’s expected to fetch between roughly $750 and $1,000.
The piece depicts Henrietta Greville, Countess of Warwick, seated with one arm draped across her lap. Some experts think it’s an early sketch for Henrietta, Countess of Warwick, and Her Children (1787-89), a portrait currently housed in the Frick Collection in Manhattan—just 100 miles south of the Hudson dumpster where the sketch was discovered.
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“This is a remarkable find, and I’m delighted it was saved from the rubbish,” Lara L’vov-Basirov, a specialist at Roseberys, tells Paul Burnell of BBC News. “This sketch is from Romney’s mature period at the height of his sensitivity as a portraitist.”
Per the lot listing, Romney was “uninhibited by the dictates of 18th-century aesthetics.” The artist used sweeping, “rapidly executed” lines to convey the outlines of his subject.
The sketch is small, measuring just four inches tall. The back bears the number “53,” which Roseberys identifies as Romney’s studio stamp, while its mount is labeled “G. Romney.” An inscription in pencil notes, “She sat to Romney in 1777, 1782 and 1784.”
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Henrietta Vernon married George Greville, Second Earl of Warwick, in 1776. As L’vov-Basirov tells BBC News, the Grevilles were “lifelong patrons and friends” of Romney. Henrietta’s brother-in-law even introduced Romney to his muse and favorite model, Emma Hamilton, who appears in more than 60 of his paintings.
However, not all experts are convinced that the sketch was a study for Romney’s portrait at the Frick. Alex Kidson, an art historian who wrote a 2015 catalogue raisonné of Romney’s work, thinks it’s linked to a lost portrait of the Countess of Warwick that survives only as an engraving.
“Romney made a number of other portraits of seated ladies around the same time, which the drawing could equally be a study for,” Kidson tells Artnet.
The mystery of how the sketch ended up in a Hudson dumpster is fitting for the reclusive Romney, who kept his personal affairs from public view as he built his artistic career.
As Roseberys notes, he “continuously experimented with compositions, creating countless preparatory drawings, sometimes including them in his finished compositions, but mostly experimenting for his own reference and pleasure.”
