The prolific portraitist George Romney was rivalled only by Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough in critical reputation. In fact, upon the death of Reynolds in 1792, he became the most sought-after portrait painter in England. Although, like many artists of his generation, he aspired to be a history painter, the bulk of his career was spent in capturing the likenesses of the wealthy. Due to an enmity that existed between him and the more senior Sir Joshua Reynolds, Romney was never invited to become a member of the Royal Academy of Arts. This exclusion cost him access to coveted circles of patronage. However, through his own resourcefulness, he did manage to take the requisite Grand Tour to Italy and garnered a fluency in the techniques of Old Masters like Raphael, whose paintings he was able to copy while traveling through France and Italy from 1772-1775.

Our portrait can be dated to 1787, on the basis of the records that Romney kept of his appointments with sitters. Our version is one of two and has recently been confirmed by scholars to be the prime version, commissioned by the sitter, Henry Ainslie, a physician, who was also a childhood friend of the artist’s son, John Romney. With the reemergence of its pendant, a portrait of Ainslie’s wife, Agnes, née Harrison, the logic of its composition becomes clear. Ainslie, who would have been twenty-six years old at the time, is positioned slightly to the right, gazing amiably at the viewer. His wife, with their first son on her lap, is composed complementarily to balance the pendant portrait of her husband. The fluid brushwork and conspicuous unfinish in evidence here, were, by the late 1780s, trademarks of Romney’s mature style.