The sketch was completed by English portraitist George Romney in the late 1700s and depicts his friend and patron Henrietta Greville, Countess of Warwick.
Roseberys LondonThe 250-year-old George Romney sketch depicts Henrietta Greville, Countess of Warwick.
You never know what you may find while dumpster diving. Recently, one dumpster diver in New York state came across an especially surprising discovery while rummaging through trash bins in the town of Hudson: an artist’s sketch that has been attributed to George Romney, a renowned 18th-century portraitist.
The drawing depicts Henrietta Greville, Countess of Warwick, and it may even be a preliminary sketch of a portrait Romney completed in the late 1780s. Surprisingly, the finished portrait is now part of the Frick Collection — located just over 100 miles away from where the sketch was found in a dumpster.
Now, the unexpected find is set to go up for auction.
Finding The George Romney Sketch In A New York Dumpster
Hudson, New York, is known as an artist’s town. But the discovery of the George Romney sketch in a local dumpster still came as an utter shock.
The dumpster diver, who has chosen to remain anonymous, was rifling through garbage when they noticed the pen-and-ink drawing. As an antiques enthusiast, they were drawn to the simple sketch. Not only was the art itself impressive, but it looked official, with the label “G. Romney” on its mount and the artist’s studio stamp on the back.
Roseberys LondonThe back of the George Romney sketch.
“When I first found it buried in the dumpster, it looked interesting but I had no idea it was nearly 300 years old,” the anonymous local said in a statement reported by Artnet. “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?”
Indeed, experts soon connected the sketch to George Romney, an 18th-century British artist whose portraits are prized at museums across the world. Now, it’s set to be auctioned by Roseberys London.
“When I asked my client about the drawing’s provenance and how it came to be in his possession, I couldn’t believe my ears when he said that he stumbled across it in a dumpster — apparently buried right at the bottom and not in any kind of envelope or protective casing,” Lara L’vov-Basirov, head of Old Master, British and European Pictures at Roseberys, told All That’s Interesting. “I am of course thrilled that it has been saved!”
However, some questions about the drawing remain.
The Mysterious Origin Of The George Romney Sketch
Public DomainHenrietta, Countess of Warwick, and Her Children (1787-1789) is part of the Frick Collection.
Based on a note on the back of the artwork, experts believe that the George Romney sketch is of Henrietta Greville, Countess of Warwick. They suspect that the drawing was a preliminary design for a formal portrait of Greville, which happens to be held at the Frick, just over 100 miles away in New York City.
However, Romney was friends with Greville, and he painted more than one portrait of her. As such, some believe that the sketch may have been created for a different painting of the countess, one lost to time and surviving today only as an engraving.
Public DomainGeorge Romney’s self-portrait.
“Romney had many sitters over his artistic career (over 10,000 appointments are recorded with sitters in his diaries),” L’vov-Basirov told All That’s Interesting. “We can’t be 100 percent sure which sitter this sketch represents but it does give us a wonderful insight into his drawing technique. This sketch — with its spontaneous and fluent lines — very much testifies to his accomplished draughtsmanship.”
Though Romney is best known for his oil paintings, which frequently sell for tens of thousands of dollars, his simple sketches have appeared at auctions before. The drawing found in a Hudson dumpster is currently valued at £600 to £800 (roughly $760 to $1,000), but his other preliminary sketches have sold for several thousand dollars in the past.
As such, the George Romney drawing is truly a remarkable find. Though it’s unknown who once owned it — or why they decided to throw it away — the sketch is a rare look inside the portraitist’s artistic process. Thanks to an anonymous dumpster diver, it will be appreciated and preserved instead of lost in a New York landfill.
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