Thomas Lawrence

English painter

• Born: April 13, 1769
• Birthplace: Bristol, Gloucestershire. England
• Died: January 7, 1830
• Place of death: London, England

The foremost portrait painter of his day, Lawrence enhanced the reputation of English art. As a collector and adviser to patrons and government, he established and enriched a number of museums.

Early Life

In his Miscellanies (1781), Davies Barrington included the following observation:

I here cannot pass unnoticed a Master Lawrence, son of an innkeeper at Devizes, in Wiltshire. This boy is now nearly ten years old, but at the age of nine, without the most distant instruction given by anyone, he was capable of copying historical pictures in a masterly style, and also succeeded amazingly in compositions of his own. . . . In about seven minutes, he scarcely ever failed of drawing a strong likeness of any person present, which had generally much freedom and grace, if the subject permitted.

Thomas Lawrence would later in life joke about his precociousness. On a pastel he gave to Mrs. Edward Forster he wrote, “Done when three weeks old, I believe.” Yet Lawrence was clearly born to paint, exhibiting his extensive talents at an early age.

It was fortunate for the Lawrence family that he did so, for the elder Thomas Lawrence was well educated but impecunious. Trained as a lawyer, he held the post of supervisor of the excise at the busy port of Bristol when his namesake was born. Indolent by nature, though, he shortly afterward gave up this office to manage the White Lion Inn and American Coffee House. The hostelry failed to provide sufficient income to support the large family—Lawrence was the youngest of fourteen children—nor would Mrs. Lawrence’s parents help. The former Lucy Read was the daughter of a prosperous clergyman, but she had been disinherited when she eloped with the elder Lawrence.

In 1773, Thomas Lawrence, Sr., moved the family to Devizes to become proprietor of the Black Bear Inn, on the Great West Road leading to the resort town of Bath. By the time Lawrence was five, his father was introducing him to guests by asking, “Will you have him recite from the poets or take your portraits?” At Devizes, Lawrence received his only formal education, which ended when the boy was eight. In 1779, the Black Bear failed, and the family left Devizes.

Already, though, Lawrence had established a regional reputation. Traveling through Oxford and Weymouth, he began his role as his family’s chief supporter by painting portraits of all the leading figures in these towns. When the family settled in Bath, the twelve-year-old Lawrence set up a studio at 2 Alfred Street; the address soon became the resort of the most fashionable people of the town.

Not only did people flock to Lawrence to have their portraits painted, giving the youth an income of more than œ500 a year, but they also wanted to paint him. All of his life he was to be popular because of his graceful manners and elegant looks, the one coming to him as naturally as the other. In 1780, Fanny Burney wrote in her diary, “I was equally struck with the boy and his works.” Sarah Thackeray remembered that at sixteen Lawrence “was remarkably handsome . . .; and his hair, which was beautiful, was so redundant, that its rich, dark curls almost obscured his face when he stooped to draw.” William Hoare, a member of the Royal Academy, painted Lawrence about 1780 and was so taken with the youth that he offered to send him to Italy to study the masters. The elder Lawrence, fearing the loss of income that would result, replied that his son’s talents were in need of no cultivation.

Others besides Hoare were enchanted by the young prodigy. Mary Hartley, another local artist, gave him instruction. Thomas Barker, a landscape painter, showed him how to use oils. Sir Henry Harpur and his wife, Lady Frances, wanted to adopt him, and a local collector, Mr. Hamilton, opened his private gallery to the boy. Lawrence took advantage of this opportunity by copying a number of old masters, among them Raphael’s Transfiguration. In 1784, two years after he had reproduced the work, he submitted his version to the Royal Academy’s annual competition. Because it had not been painted within the year, it was not eligible for the first prize, a gold palette, but the academy was so impressed that it ordered the second prize, a silver palette, completely gilded, and added an award of five guineas “as a token of the Society’s approbation of his abilities.”

Life’s Work

Aided by Edward Poore of Salisbury and the Reverend Henry Kent, Lawrence moved to London in 1786. Lawrence was living at 4 Leicester Square, close to Sir Joshua Reynolds, president of the Royal Academy and dean of English art. Reynolds was as captivated by Lawrence as everyone else; Lawrence became a frequent guest, and Reynolds observed, “This young man has begun at a point of excellence where I left off.” Lawrence was only slightly less confident of his abilities, writing to his mother in September, 1786, “Excepting Sir Joshua, for the painting of a head, I would risk my reputation with any painter in London.”

Impartial observers agreed. One critic of the 1789 exhibition of the Royal Academy, to which Lawrence submitted thirteen pieces, called him “the Sir Joshua of futurity not far off,” and another reviewer said that the portrait of Charlotte Lennox might “easily be mistaken for one of the President’s best heads.” Among the portraits Lawrence exhibited in 1789 was one of Lady Cremorne. Together with the painting of Lennox it earned for him an introduction to the royal family and a commission to paint Queen Caroline and her daughter, Princess Amelia.

The promise of the 1789 showing seemed fulfilled the next year, when Lawrence exhibited two of his finest works. His portrait of actor Elizabeth Farren was the highlight of the Royal Academy show. The picture ensured Lawrence’s reputation. He became the highest-paid artist in London; for the rest of his career his income ranged between œ10,000 and œ20,000 a year.

As impressive as Portrait of an Actress was Lawrence’s rendition of Queen Charlotte and her daughter. Because of Lawrence’s early work in pastels, he remained an indifferent colorist all of his life, yet in this painting, the limited range of blue-green, white, and gray shows a harmonious variation that prevents monotony. Behind the figures is a rich landscape of Windsor, showing a prospect of Eton College.

Such an individualized background was typical of Lawrence’s early work. The 1794 portrait of Richard Payne Knight includes a volume of architectural drawings and an antique urn, reflecting Payne’s interest in classical art. Lady Suffield’s pose in her portrait imitates that of a figure on the garden urn behind her. Later, under pressure to produce paintings rapidly, Lawrence would rely on more generalized backgrounds.

Following the triumph of the 1790 exhibition, Lawrence was nominated by George III to become an associate of the Royal Academy. In a fit of independence, the academy rejected him, but on November 10, 1791, he was elected. Early the next year, Sir Joshua Reynolds died, and on February 26, 1792, George III named Lawrence Painter-in-Ordinary in Reynolds’s place. The Dilettanti Society also chose Lawrence as Reynolds’s successor, waiving its long-standing rule of admitting no one who had not visited Italy. Two years later, as soon as he was old enough to be eligible, he was granted full membership in the Royal Academy.

Although Lawrence’s portraits were earning high praise and high prices, he hoped to make his reputation as a historical painter. Generalized scenes were still regarded as the highest form of art in the late eighteenth century, and as early as 1787, Lawrence was exhibiting these along with his portraits at the Royal Academy. In 1797, he submitted Satan Summoning up His Legions, which he was perversely to claim as his greatest work. No one else shared that view. It never sold in Lawrence’s lifetime, and even his friend and admirer Henry Fuseli called it “a damned thing certainly, but not the devil.” Antony Pasquin was still less flattering, claiming that Satan resembled “a mad sugar-baker dancing naked in a conflagration of his own treacle.” However much Lawrence defended the picture, he never again attempted a purely historical painting, though he would introduce elements of the grand manner in such works as The Princess of Wales and Princess Charlotte (1800-1801), in which he depicted Princess Caroline as an inspired harpist. He also enjoyed painting the actor John Philip Kemble in various guises, such as Coriolanus, Hamlet, and Cato.

Kemble’s is also the face of the archfiend in Lawrence’s 1797 Satan, for at that time, Kemble was interfering with the artist’s pursuit of his niece Sally, the older daughter of Sarah Siddons. Sarah herself also appears in the painting as one of the devils. Lawrence’s romance with the members of the Siddons family reveals his less attractive side, not only in the vindictiveness exhibited in his picture but also in the fickleness of his affections. After being engaged to Sally, he transferred his love to her sister, Maria, and became engaged to her instead. Then he deserted her and returned to Sally. Neither girl was physically strong, but Lawrence’s behavior was blamed for hastening Maria’s death in 1798. As she lay dying, she made Sally promise not to marry Lawrence; Sally was to die unwed five years later, in April, 1803. Lawrence would die a bachelor, and after Sally’s death, he always wore black and sealed his letters with dark wax.

Despite troubles in his personal life, Lawrence’s professional reputation continued to grow. In typical Hanoverian fashion, the prince of Wales rejected the king’s choice of artist, patronizing John Hoppner. When Hoppner died in 1810, though, even the prince regent recognized that no one else approached Lawrence’s talent. In 1814, he commissioned Lawrence to provide a series of portraits for Windsor Castle to depict all the Allied leaders who had participated in the defeat of Napoleon. In the course of this commission, which required six years to complete and which took the painter to France, Vienna, and Rome, Lawrence created some of his finest work, particularly the picture of Pope Pius VII (1819), which demonstrates the weariness and resignation of a spiritually strong man.

Already in 1815, the prince regent had knighted Lawrence for enhancing the reputation of English art. Upon Lawrence’s return from the Continent in 1820, the prince, now George IV, named him president of the Royal Academy and reappointed him Painter-in-Ordinary, thus completing Lawrence’s inheritance of Reynolds’s honors. Awards continued to pour in: Oxford presented him with a doctorate of civil letters on June 14, 1820; the academies of Bologna, Venice, Vienna, Turin, and Copenhagen sent him diplomas; and Charles X of France made him a Chevalier de l’Ordre Royal de la Légion d’Honneur in 1825.

Lawrence was enriching British art not only with his brush but also with his advice and his purse. His testimony before Parliament in 1816 was instrumental in convincing the country to purchase the Elgin Marbles at a time when a number of reputable artists and critics failed to appreciate their value. Lawrence was a close friend and artistic counselor to John Julius Angerstein; after Angerstein’s death, Lawrence convinced the collector’s son to sell his father’s extensive art collection to the nation at a substantial discount. On May 10, 1824, the National Gallery opened with Angerstein’s pictures. Fittingly, Lawrence was named a trustee. Meanwhile, Lawrence himself was assembling England’s largest collection of drawings by the old masters. Among the five thousand works were one hundred by Albrecht Dürer, almost two hundred Raphaels, and seventy-five that were attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. Lawrence had hoped to keep the collection together and make it public by offering it in his will to George IV for œ18,000, about a quarter of its value. Because Lawrence died in debt, the pictures were dispersed to satisfy his creditors. Still, Oxford University’s Ashmolean Museum and the Malcolm Collection of the British Museum were able to secure important pieces that remain national treasures.

At the peak of his reputation, Lawrence died suddenly on January 7, 1830, probably from excessive bleeding by his physician. His body lay in state at the Royal Academy’s Somerset House, and he was buried near the grave of Reynolds in St. Paul’s on January 21, 1830.

Significance

On the day after Sir Thomas Lawrence’s death, Charles Greville expressed the general opinion of Lawrence’s achievements:

He was longè primus of all living Painters, and has left no one fit to succeed him in the chair of the Royal Academy. . . . He is an irreparable loss; since Sir Joshua there has been no painter like him; his Portraits as pictures I think are not nearly so fine as Sir Joshua’s, but as likenesses many of them are quite perfect.

Lawrence himself was less certain of his status, commenting, “I do not for a moment suppose that my reputation will ever stand as high after my death as it has in my lifetime.”

Lawrence’s prediction proved accurate. Writing some eighty years after Lawrence’s death, Sir Walter Armstrong rated him lowest of the six major artists of the late eighteenth century, beneath Thomas Gainsborough, Reynolds, Henry Raeburn, George Romney, and Hoppner. Yet Armstrong’s judgment seems as misguided as that of Lawrence’s contemporaries who ranked him with Titian. Lawrence was a fine draftsman, and throughout his career, he demonstrated his capacity for capturing the spirit as well as the physical likeness of an individual.

Too often Lawrence was rushed. Whereas Reynolds attempted only seventy to eighty portraits a year after 1769, Lawrence throughout his career accepted hundreds of commissions, starting as many as four portraits in a day. Many of these naturally remained unfinished. Even the excellent painting of his good friend Mrs. Jens Wolff, completed in 1815, took him twelve years, and visitors to his house at 65 Russell Square commented on the large number of unfinished canvases in evidence. Under financial pressure to churn out portraits, he relied on his extensive technical genius to produce exact likenesses that lacked spirit. Even his admirer and defender Kenneth Garlick concedes that his “great powers . . . often went unexpressed.”

When he did exhibit those great powers, Lawrence united classical composition with Romantic intensity to produce some of the finest portraits of his, or any, age. He also recognized talent in others, such as William Blake, John James Audubon, and the young J. M. W. Turner, encouraging them with praise and money. Blake’s The Wise and Foolish Virgins, now hanging in the Tate Gallery, London, was Lawrence’s, purchased for fifteen guineas in 1822 when scarcely anyone appreciated the arch-Romantic. Other museums, too, have benefited from his collecting, and without his efforts neither the National Gallery nor the Royal Hibernian Society would have been established as early as it was.

As an artist, collector, adviser, and patron, he raised the English School to a new level of excellence. What has been said of Augustus Caesar and Rome may with equal justice be applied to Lawrence and English art: He found it brick, and he left it marble.

Bibliography

Armstrong, Sir Walter. Lawrence. London: Methuen, 1913. Reflecting the sentiment of the day, Armstrong did not rate Lawrence highly. Yet this was a pioneering study that called attention to the artist and led to more careful study than Lawrence had previously received.

Garlick, Kenneth. Sir Thomas Lawrence. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954. In nineteen pages of text, Garlick offers a sound critical assessment of Lawrence’s achievement, which he then demonstrates in more than one hundred carefully chosen reproductions.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Sir Thomas Lawrence: Portraits of an Age, 1790-1830. Alexandria, Va.: Art Services International, 1993. Garlick wrote the text for this catalog, which accompanied an exhibition of Lawrence’s portraits. Includes reproductions of the paintings.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. A Catalogue of the Paintings, Drawings, and Pastels of Sir Thomas Lawrence. Glasgow, Scotland: Walpole Society, 1964. An indispensable listing of the works of Lawrence, noting the provenance of each and the fee that Lawrence charged. The pictures are briefly described but none is reproduced.

Goldring, Douglas. Regency Portrait Painter: The Life of Sir Thomas Lawrence, P. R. A. London: MacDonald, 1951. A sympathetic, detailed biography with little critical evaluation of the works. Devotes much space to defending Lawrence’s relationship with the Siddons family.

Mayoux, Jean Jacques. English Painting. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975. A survey of British art from the mid-1700’s to the mid-1800’s. Puts Lawrence within the context of his period.

Redgrave, Richard, and Samuel Redgrave. Century of English Painters. London: Phaidon, 1947. Covers the same period as Mayoux’s book but devotes an entire chapter to Lawrence.

Vaughan, William. British Painting: The Golden Age from Hogarth to Turner. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1999. Examines British painting from 1730 through 1851, including Lawrence’s innovations in portraiture. Analyzes the class structure and political climate in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that created a distinctive British painting style.

Wark, Robert R. The Blue Boy [and] Pinkie. San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library Press, 1998. Wark, a former curator of art collections at the Huntington, provides a history of the Huntington’s best-known paintings: Pinkie by Lawrence, and The Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough. Discusses the identity of the two children and why the artists chose to paint them.

Young, Mahonri Sharp. “Sir Thomas Lawrence, R. A.: Millionaire Collector.” Art News 54 (October, 1955): 24-27. Emphasizes the important role that Lawrence played as a collector of old masters and explores the artist’s perennially troubled finances.