(1747 - 90) of Neswick Hall, Yorks, o. s. of Robert Grimston (d. 1756) and ward of John Grimston (1725 - 80) of Kilnwick, Yorks; m. 1770 (wife d. 1771).
1767 - 8 Turin (by 1 Jan. - Sep. 1767), Milan, Genoa, Florence, Rome (Dec. 1767 - 7 May 1768), Venice (two or three weeks), Turin (by 22 Jun.)
Although Grimston had left England under doctor's orders, he told his parents that he intended 'to polish myself so far that when I come home again you shall all wonder and say Is this the clownish school Boy, whom I knew two years ago.'1 He set out in December 1765, spending a year in France with J.-B. Durade, the French print dealer, with whom he quarrelled. Grimston then proceeded to Italy with Mr and Mrs Swinburn whom he had met at Aix. On 1 January 1767 he wrote to his guardian from Turin, saying how kind Mrs Swinburn was. He attended the Academy at Turin for several months, leaving in September for Milan, and travelling through Genoa and Florence to Rome.
On 30 March 1768 he told his guardian he had spent 'these last four months in Rome'; he sat for a full-length portrait to 'the best painter here & who is now reckond as good a painter as any in Europe' - presumably Maron, whose whole-length portrait of Grimston, dated 1768, is at Sledmere.2 'Roberto Grimston' applied for the export from Rome of 23 paintings (6 modern, two by Orizzonte, the others old masters) on 7 May 1768.3 He did not like the Romans; 'was it not for the great resource of one's own Countrymen & the many immense fine things that are contained in it [Rome] in regard to Society would be the most disagreeable place in the world'. But he enjoyed the Carnival, masking himself one day in woman's clothes; he judged the Pope to be 'a very good natured old man', and he saw the 'poor unhappy Chevalier De St George'. In Rome he shared apartments with Thomas Noel (later Viscount Wentworth) and Thomas Hooke, and said that he and Sir John Blois had made 'all the tour together'. They had intended to go together to Naples, but instead Grimston left Rome with Hooke and Noel.
They were in Turin by 22 June, having spent two or three weeks in Venice; Hooke was then ill and the party did not expect to resume their homeward journey for another two weeks. In this, his last letter to his guardian, Grimston reflected that 'not even two years & a half that I have been rolling about, can give me a sufficient Impudence to fancy that I am wise or know more than all the world besides myself, which a young man generally does, after coming home from abroad'.
In 1792 - 4 his two (orphaned) daughters, Maria (who m. Hawkesworth Fawkes in 1794) and Lucy (who m. Sir Robert Wilmot in 1796), were in Italy with Sir John Legard.
1. See M.E. Ingram, Leaves from a Family Tree, [1951], 167 - 71, and Grimston letters mss. 2. Yorkshire Houses 1994, no.46. 3. ASR aba 12, f.285.