George Romney, 
British 1734-1802- 
Sketch of a lady, traditionally identified as Henrietta,...

George Romney, 
British 1734-1802- 

Sketch of a lady, traditionally identified as Henrietta, Countess of Warwick, seated with her arm outstretched; 

pen and black ink on laid paper, bears artist's studio stamp numbered '53' in pencil verso, bears various later pencil inscriptions to card mount, 10.1 x 9.5 cm. (unframed / mounted)

Provenance: 
with R. R. Sée (the latter day assistant of the French dealer Xavier Haas, who bought a huge number of the drawings and sketchbooks that surfaced in the sale of Romney's grand-daughter Elizabeth at Christie's in 1894). 
Found by the present owner in a dumpster in Hudson, New York, in 2024. 

Note: 
We are grateful to Alex Kidson for confirming the authenticity of the present work. 

This sketch is purportedly a preparatory work for Romney's finished portrait of the Countess of Warwick with her children, painted in 1787-89, which is in the Frick Collection in New York [no.1908.1.107]. However, Romney conceived a significant number of portraits of seated ladies and we cannot yet state with confidence which one this would have been a preliminary sketch for.

The artist was known to have had many sitters over his artistic career (over 10,000 appointments are recorded with sitters in his diaries). 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. His sketches give a wonderful insight into his drawing technique where he is uninhibited by the dictates of eighteenth-century aesthetics. The present pen and ink drawing is rapidly executed with fluent lines. 

The inscription to the inside of the mount reads 'Sketch for Henrietta Countess of Warwick, born 1760, married as his 2nd wife, George 2nd Earl of Warwick in 1776, died 20 April 1838. She sat to Romney in 1777, 1782 and 1784...'