Sir Thomas Lawrence

1769 - 1830 • English • Painter • Grand Manner

"Master Lawrence takes very striking likenesses of ladies and gentlemen for a charge of one guinea for all oval crayon." - Bath Chronicle, 1782

One of 17 children, son of an innkeeper, Lawrence was so skilled at crayon portraiture that he was already earning money, perhaps even supporting his family, at the age of ro. At 13, when they moved to Bath, his father put an advertisement, quoted above, in the local newspaper. As is true of other major British portraitists of his period (e.g., RAEBURN and ROMNEY), Lawrence was largely self-taught. When he was r 7 he thought he could compete with any painter except REYNOLDS, so he went to London to confront the master. At the Royal Academy he studied Reynolds's social style more carefully than his artistry, and he was soon painting portraits of the leaders of high society, including Queen Charlotte ( 1789 ). When Reynolds died in 1792, Lawrence, only 22, succeeded him in the post of Painter to the King. He made one unsuccessful stab at HISTORY PAINTING and then returned to his prosperous portraiture. He was knighted and dispatched to the Continent by the king: His mission was to paint portraits of the European leaders important to the defeat of Napoleon . Besides charming his way through cosmopolitan society, Lawrence studied portraits by TITIAN and VELAZQUEZ in collections abroad. To most critics, he never seems to have gone beyond virtuoso flattery and an ability to give pleasure. To Marie-Henri Beyle, whose pen name was Stendhal, he did not even accomplish that. Stendhal wrote, in 1824: "M. Lawrence's manner is a caricature of the carelessness of genius. I admit I do not understand the reputation of this painter. ... His figures do not have a wooden appearance ... but truthfully, they possess very little merit .... M. Lawrence must be very clever, or else our London neighbors must be very poor connoisseurs." Like SARGENT at the end of the 19th century, Lawrence was a brilliant mirror of a certain class at a certain moment in time.