A centre for Romney Studies
Alderman Thomas Wilson
The Romney Society has just acquired the David Cross archive of George Romney. The Society has placed it in the Kendal Record Office where it will be freely available to the public for study. The archive is the result of more than ten years’ work whilst Dr. Cross was working on his recently published biography of George Romney - A Striking Likeness, (2000). The purchase of the archive was made possible by a generous donation by a life member of the Romney Society, Glyn Hopkin who is a collector of Romney paintings. He said that he was very pleased to be helping to put the archive in the public domain.
Kendal now becomes a centre for Romney studies. Not only does it have many portraits, drawings and sketchbooks in collections open to the public at Abbot Hall, Kendal Town Hall and Sizergh Castle but there are further paintings and sketchbooks nearby in Lancaster and Barrow-in-Furness. In Kendal the Carnegie Public Library has a complete set of fifteen Romney biographies dating from 1809 to 2000.
Mrs. Jane Wilson
The Society will continue to build up the archive in the Record Office for the benefit of all those studying the arts of the eighteenth century. A sub committee has been formed to carry this work forward. The society will be grateful for any offers to add copies of theses, copies of original Romney material, to the main Romney archive.
We are now going through our own historical records for possible additions. This purchase has enabled the society to make perhaps its most important contribution to the furtherance of Romney studies.