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Sir Thomas Lawrence

English, 1769 - 1830

BiographyEnglish portrait painter. Lawrence was born in Bristol but spent his childhood in Devizes, at a coaching inn run by his educated but feckless father. The inn had a fashionable clientele, staying overnight on their way to Bath, and Lawrence, an infant prodigy, was soon employed in drawing their likenesses in profile. By 1780, when the family moved to Bath, his crayon and watercolour portraits provided a major part of their income. By 1787 Lawrence was in London where he was admitted to the RA Schools (see under London), already totally proficient and painting in oils. Next year he wrote to his mother: ‘excepting Sir Joshua (Reynolds), for the painting of a head, I would risk my reputation with any painter in London.’ In 1789 he was commanded to paint Queen Charlotte (London, NG), which, together with his portrait of the actress Eliza Farren (1789; New York, Met. Mus.), established his reputation. His early paintings have an informality and lightness of touch peculiar to the artist and were praised for their likeness and the execution of drapery which, unlike Reynolds, he painted himself. He consolidated but did not greatly alter his style for the rest of his career, although after 1800 his work reflects the prevailing Romantic sensibility. In 1797 he attempted a work in the Grand Manner, Satan Summoning his Legions (London, RA), which, despite being a critical failure, provided the template for his dramatic and successful Kemble as Coriolanus (1789; London, Guildhall). On the death of Hoppner, whom he rightly considered an inferior painter, in 1810, he was recognized as the finest portrait painter in England and patronized by the Prince Regent, whom he immortalized in velvet and silver satin in 1818 (Dublin, NG Ireland). In 1815 he was knighted as a preliminary to the royal commission to paint the leaders of the allied victory over Napoleon (Windsor Castle, Royal Coll.), a series which culminates with the masterly Pope Pius VII (1819).

His apparent facility, for which he was later criticized, was painstakingly achieved. His late paintings of children, like the Calmady Sisters (1824; New York, Met. Mus.), are romantically sentimental, but his adult portraits are psychologically penetrating. He caught the hauteur of Payne Knight (1794; Manchester, Whitworth AG) without sacrificing his obvious intelligence, and the shrewdness of the bankers, Barings (1807; priv. coll.), without neglecting their humanity. The latter advised him on his massive financial difficulties, debts of over £20,000 in 1807. His collection of old master drawings, arguably the finest ever created, was reputed to have cost him over £60,000.

Rodgers, David. "Lawrence, Sir Thomas." In The Oxford Companion to Western Art, edited by Hugh Brigstocke. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/opr/t118/e1432 (accessed May 2, 2012).

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