Robert Goodloe Harper Pennington (1854-1920)
R.G. Harper Pennington, Artist & Society Portraitist
He came from a prominent Maryland family, his mother being a great-granddaughter of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Signer of the Declaration of Independence. Pennington studied art under Jean Léon Gérome at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1880 he travelled to Munich where he was advised to join a group of American painters led by Frank Duveneck in Florence which included John White Alexander, Otto Henry Bacher, Robert Frederick Blum, Charles Abel Corwin, George Edward Hopkins, Julius Rolshoven and Theodore Wendel. While in Venice, he met James Abbott McNeill Whistler, of whom he was a great admirer and the two became close friends. Whistler drew Pennington's portrait (pictured) in chalk and pastel.
Pennington's small portraits in oil and pastel show Whistler's influence and are sometimes mistaken for his work. Whistler invited Pennington to return with him to London in 1880, but Pennington decided to travel and paint around Italy. While in Venice, he made a portrait of Robert Browning for Katherine (de Kay) Bronson, a prominent American expatriate. After returning to London, Pennington took one of four studios at Carlyle Studios, alongside Theodore Roussel and George Percy Jacomb-Hood. In 1884, he made a full-length portrait of Oscar Wilde as a wedding gift for Wilde and his wife, Constance, which hung in Wilde's London home. He also created fifteen engravings from drawings for Wilde's 1889 essay, London Models. Pennington was a frequent visitor to 31 Tite Street to see Whistler (whom he drew in 1885 while Whistler gave his Ten O'clock Lecture). In 1886 or 1887, Whistler drew Pennington's portrait for a second time. While in London, Pennington was a member of the Beefsteak Club, a private dining club in Leicester Square, and was "exceedingly popular in both London and Paris".
Pennington made several paintings for King Edward VII (then the Prince of Wales), "who was so well pleased with the artist's skill that he presented him with his photograph bearing his autograph." In 1885, he made portraits of Patsy Cornwallis-West and the Misses Edith Clarke and Nellie Farren Calhoun while in London. In 1908, he returned to Europe by traveling aboard the French liner La Provence to Paris. On October 31, 1888, Pennington was married to Caroline DeWolf Theobald, a daughter of Dr. Samuel Theobald, a leading physician of Baltimore (and grandson of surgeon Nathan Ryno Smith). Before their divorce in 1913, they were the parents of four daughters and one son (listed).
It is popularly told that Pennington drew Robert Gould Shaw II in the nude as the character ‘Little Billee’ from the novel Trilby by George du Maurier, and which was supposed to have hung in the bedroom of Harry Lehr, the homosexual husband of Elizabeth Wharton Drexel. However, despite being perhaps believable, there is no evidence that Shaw ever posed for the painting, nor that it ever hung in Lehr's bedroom.
It is popularly told that Pennington drew Robert Gould Shaw II in the nude as the character ‘Little Billee’ from the novel Trilby by George du Maurier, and which was supposed to have hung in the bedroom of Harry Lehr, the homosexual husband of Elizabeth Wharton Drexel. However, despite being perhaps believable, there is no evidence that Shaw ever posed for the painting, nor that it ever hung in Lehr's bedroom.
