Sir Thomas Lawrence

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
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UNIVERSITY of CAUFOKWi*

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SIR THOMAS
LAWRENCE, P.R.A

SIR THOMAS
LAWRENCE

LONDON-GEORGE NEWNES -LIMITED-
SOUTHAMPTON STREET - STRAND-WO
NEW YORK- FREDKrWARNE Ǥ CO-36EAST22*ST

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THE BALLANTYNE PRESS
TAVISTOCK ST. LONDON

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CONTENTS

Page

Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A. By R. S. Clouston vii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A. . . ...... Frontispiece

Childhood's Innocence ............ i

Princess Amelia ............. 2

Princess Charlotte of Wales ........... 3

Master Lambton 4

XT J

Nature .... ........... 5

The Proffered Kiss ............. 6

Child with Flowers ............. 7

Countess Gower and Daughter .......... 8

Countess Grey and Children ........... 9

The beautiful Miss Croker ........... 10

Countess Blessington ............ n

Eliza Farren .............. 12

Miss Macdonald ............. 13

Countess Grosvenor ............ 14

Lady Irimleston ............. 15

Miss Pheleps .............. 16

A Gipsy Girl .............. 17

Lady Mary Bentinck ............ 18

Lady Callcott .............. 19

Mrs. Siddons .............. 20

Miss Caroline Fry ............. 21

Portrait of a Lady ............. 22

Lady Charlotte Greville ............ 23

Caroline of Brunswick ............ 24

Caroline of Brunswick ............ 25

Sarah Siddons .............. 26

J. P. Kemble as Hamlet ............ 27

William Linley ............. 28

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS— continued

Page

George 1^ 29

Sir William Grant 30

Lord Whitworth 31

John Julius Angerstein 32

Sir John Soane, R.A 33

Samuel Woodburn 34

Warren Hastings 35

John Arthur Douglas 36

Viscount Melville 37

The Rt. Hon. Henry Bathurst, K.G 38

Charles, second Earl Grey 39

Prince of Hardenberg 40

Marquis of Londonderry 41

Sir Samuel Romilly, Knt 42

Sir John Moore, K.B 43

Sir Graham Moore 44

George Canning 45

Benjamin West, P.R.A 46

Thomas Campbell 47

William Wilberforce 48

SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE, P.R.A.

1769-1830

BY R. S. CLOUSTON

F the biographical sketches of Lawrence had been fiction
instead of fact, they would most undoubtedly have
received severe treatment from the critics. He had
everything against him ; and yet his life is a line of
unbroken successes. He had the merest smattering of
education, having been sent to school at six and re-
moved, through his father's failure in business, at eight.
Yet in after life he fascinated no less a man than Lord Byron, who wrote
of him that he " talked delightfully."

His art training was, most unfortunately, of even shorter duration,
and came at a time when he had already formed his style for good or evil.
He had what in his instance was certainly the misfortune to be an infant
prodigy, and, though admitted to the Royal Academy schools at the
age of eighteen, he was already so proficient in his art that he could
learn nothing from his fellow students, and but little from his masters.
This is the more to be regretted because, through his father's greed (or
bad judgment) an offer made by a Derbyshire baronet to send the youth-
ful genius to Rome had been refused several years previously. " His
son's talents," he said, " required no cultivation."

Rome was then, and for some time after, by far the best school for a
young artist, and it is impossible to do more than merely guess what
English art lost by this ungracious refusal. There can be little doubt
that, had it been accepted, Lawrence would have been a greater painter,
but exactly how much greater no one can say. Abnormal precocity is
not necessarily genius, or Angelica Kauffmann would have been one of
the great artists of the world ; but " the fair Angelica " had early ad-
vantages which Lawrence had not. His faults are those of his training

SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE

— or rather his want of it. His rather mediocre eye for colour and his
lack of what painters call " quality " were among the chief ; and to
these, at the time of his admission into the Academy schools, he had,
by sheer force of circumstances, been able to pay no attention. Eighteen
is by no means too old for the ordinary art student to begin the serious
study of oils, but not one in a thousand has spent the previous ten years
in full practice as a professional artist. The probability is that, had
Lawrence been given the opportunity of learning what colour and quality
are at their highest, he would have been an immensely greater artist,
for his early work in London was most happily affected by Sir Joshua's
best period, and a similar influence can be seen in his much later
Italian portraits.

Personal history is a large factor in every artistic career, but, in the
case of Lawrence, a knowledge of his early life and the circumstances
surrounding him are more than usually essential before a critical estimate
can be formed of his ability.

Little is known of his mother, except that she was of good family,
and was disowned by her relations on her clandestine marriage with her
ne'er-do-well husband, but her influence on the up-bringing and educa-
tion of the future President probably accounts for the fact that he could
always take his place in any society, from royalty downwards.

Thomas Lawrence, senior, though at the time of his son's birth an
innkeeper in Bristol, was an educated man and the son of a clergyman ;
but, in the words of Cunningham, he "was either so unsteady of pur-
pose or so unfortunate in choice that he became successively attorney,
poetaster, spouter of odes, actor, revenue officer, farmer, and publican,
and prospered in none of these callings." The only thing in which he
succeeded was running his son's talents on a commercial basis ; and
even in that his wrong-headedness was only saved from failure by the
indubitable genius of the lad. One of his mistakes has already been
mentioned ; another is a cause for laughter rather than regret. When
his son was beginning to be known in London he organised an exhibition
of his works, to which he added, at considerable expense — out of a
legacy to his daughter — a collection of stuffed birds, which had afterwards
to be sold for a mere trifle.

Young Lawrence was barely five years old when his father discovered
that in him he held a trump card. " Gentlemen," he would say to his
customers, " here's my son. Will you have him recite from the poets
or take your portraits ? "

A story given by most of his biographers may bear repetition. Mr.
(afterwards Lord) Kenyon and his wife arrived at the father's inn,
tired by a long journey, and — probably justly — were incensed at the
want of attention they received. The elder Lawrence suggested that
his son should recite any speech from Milton's Pandcemonium or take
their likenesses. While this was being curtly refused, an angelically
beautiful, curly-haired boy broke into the room riding on a stick ; and the

SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE

situation was saved. Like every one else who met him, either then or
in after life, Mrs. Kenyon was irresistibly attracted. " Could he draw
that gentleman's portrait?" "That I can, and very like too"; and
he produced what we are told was an " astonishingly striking likeness "
in half an hour. After this success he was coaxed into attempting a
portrait of the lady, "if," as he said, "she will turn her side to me,
for her face is not straight." This was true, which shows Lawrence's
inborn faculty of choosing the best view of his sitters, though in a child
the remark only caused amusement. The drawing was nearly half life-
size, " delicately shaded," and furthermore, the likeness was recognised
twenty-five years afterwards. This is an instance of early precocity
which it would be difficult to match, and almost impossible to beat.

At this time his father, having failed in Bristol, was, through the assist-
ance of his friends, installed in the principal inn — the Black Bear — at
Devizes, which was one of the chief halting-places on the road to Bath.
Many of the notabilities of the day rested at the inn and, we need not
doubt, were shown old Lawrence's chief stock-in-trade. When, therefore,
the appointed end to amateur inn-keeping arrived, and the boy's talent
became the one mainstay of the family, a move to Oxford, where he was
already known by many College dignitaries, was not so rash as it appears.
His pencil, says Cunningham, " was not confined to grave sexagenarians,
for many of the younger nobility and gentry were anxious to have their
portraits taken by the phenomenon ; and the female beauty of this
dignified city, and its wealthy neighbourhood, equally pressed upon his
talents."

On leaving Oxford, after a short stay at Weymouth, Lawrence's family
took a house at Bath, where an elder brother, a clergyman, had the
lectureship of St. Michael's. The rent was £100, a large figure in those
days, and though lodgers were taken to begin with, it sufficiently shows
the young artist's commercial value. He was soon fully employed with
commissions, and his prices for a crayon head raised from a guinea to
a guinea and a half. His portrait of Mrs. Siddons, as Zara, was engraved,
and his fame, even at that early age, was more than merely local. " His
studio," to quote Cunningham once more, " was the favourite resort of
the beauty, fashion, and taste of Bath ; young ladies loved to sit and
converse with this handsome prodigy ; men of taste and vertu purchased
his crayon-heads, which he drew in vast numbers, and carried them far
and near, even into foreign lands, to show as the work of the boy-artist
of Britain." Amateurs, however, were not alone in acknowledging his
talent. Hoare, the R.A. who was then famous for crayon-heads, was
attracted by the young genius, and gave him, by Lawrence's own
admission, " much advice and assistance." A more convincing proof is
that for a copy, from a copy, made either just before or shortly after his
fourteenth birthday, the Society of Arts awarded him their medal and
a prize of five guineas. Their rules prevented them from also giving the
gold palette ; but, by a special vote of the committee, he received the

SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE

" great silver palette, gilt." It was the first, though far from the last time,
that iron-bound rules were broken to do honour to the youthful artist.

Lawrence's self-sacrifice in the interests of his family is a most
admirable trait in his character. He regretted that he was not allowed
to go on the stage because he thought he should then have been able to
assist them sooner ; and there can be little doubt such a precocious boy
was perfectly aware of the fact that by " pot-boiling " for all these years
at Bath he was damaging his career as an artist. At length, in 1787,
when he was eighteen, he thought himself strong enough to go to London
for study, and at the same time continue to support his family. At the
Academy schools, which he entered in September of that year, he was so
far ahead of the other students that he did not even enter for the ordi-
nary competitions. His biographers say that he studied hard. This is
undoubtedly true, for Lawrence was a hard and conscientious worker ; but,
with the cares of a spendthrift family on his young shoulders, the time
given to study must have been of the shortest. The year 1787 was the first
in which he exhibited at the Academy, sending seven pictures. In 1788
he showed six portraits ; in 1789, thirteen ; and in 1790 twelve pictures.
The probability, therefore, is that the great improvement in Lawrence's
style at this time arose more from his friendly relations with Reynolds
and other artists than from what he learnt in the Academy schools.

In 1790 he painted his portrait of Miss Farren (afterwards Lady
Derby) which brought him still more to the front. One of the rules of
the Academy is that no man shall be elected as an associate until he is
twenty-four ; but in this year, when only twenty-one, he was put up for
election, and received three votes as against the sixteen cast for Wheatley.
If this was a failure, it is the sole instance of anything of the kind in
Lawrence's history. In the following year, at the express desire of the
King and Queen, his election took place, and in 1792, on the death of
Reynolds, still more honours came to him. Lawrence had then only
been an associate for three months, but the King at once appointed him
as painter-in-ordinary. Yet another rule was broken by the Dilettanti
Society, who, though Lawrence had never been " across the Alps,"
elected him as a member, and their painter, in Sir Joshua's place. There
seems, indeed, to have been a general consensus of opinion that rules
were not intended to apply to such men as Thomas Lawrence. " Never,
perhaps, in this country," says Redgrave, " had a man so young, so
uneducated, and so untried in his art, advanced, as it were, per saltum
to the honours and emoluments of the profession."

Lawrence was made a full R.A. in 1794 * ; was knighted by the
Regent in 1815, in spite of the fact that he had been of the Princess's
party ; and on the death of West in 1820 was the one possible choice as
President. A wonderful record, this, for a man who, both in art and
general education, was, to all intents and purposes, self-taught.

* He was elected R.A. on Feb. 10. 1794, but received his diploma December 4,
1795, which accounts for the different dates given by his biographers.

SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE

In 1814, Paris being open to travellers, Lawrence hastened to study
the collection in the Louvre, but was recalled almost at once by the Regent,
who wished to form a commemorative gallery of the crowned heads and
important personages connected with the restoration of the Bourbons.
The idea was more fully carried out when Lawrence was despatched to
Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818. From thence he went to Vienna and Rome
to complete his commission, painting most of the royalty and many of
the notable personages of Europe — in all, twenty-four portraits.

A portrait painter is at a considerable disadvantage when his work is
compared with that of his contemporaries in landscape or figure. He is
not only influenced, in the vast majority of instances, by the art theories
and leanings of his time, but is tied down to its fashions in dress. The
necessity was much lamented by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who allowed
himself very considerable latitude in rendering the costumes and coiffures
of his lady sitters. This method has certain recommendations at the
time ; for fashions change so rapidly that they may be already a thing
of the past before the portrait is seen by any one but the sitter. Gains-
borough, on the other hand (as, indeed, most other artists of the period),
simply exercised a choice, and once his costume was decided on, treated
it almost literally. Now that more than a century has elapsed, and none
but the most learned of experts can tell whether or not a dress was in
the height of the reigning fashion, the necessity for Sir Joshua's attitude
regarding eighteenth-century costume is not so apparent ; it is even, to
say the least, doubtful if there was any artistic gain.

Lawrence produced most of his work at a time when there is little
to be said in extenuation of the fashions. The misplacement of the
waist, and the oiled and curled ringlets, though he treated them as well
as we can expect such things to be treated, are anything but artistically
beautiful in themselves.

Redgrave, who, of all Lawrence's biographers, is the most severe in his
criticisms, frankly admits the disadvantage of the high-waisted dress. That
had gone out of fashion when he wrote ; but he was not so separated in time
from the reign of the "incomparable oil" as to see anything wrong in its
use. On the contrary, he actually pointed out the changed method of hair-
dressing as an advantage Lawrence possessed over his predecessors in
portraiture. He was, however, eminently fair as a critic, and he admitted,
almost in the next sentence, that " we look back on the beauties of the
last century almost as we do to the quaintness of mediaeval times, and are
apt to think nature, with her unrestrained ringlets, her mottled flesh and
simple drapery, somewhat commonplace beside the pompous barbarisms
which added many cubits to the stature of the beauties of the previous
age."

The quotation shows the danger to which the most fair-minded
critic lays himself open when influenced, as he must be, by the manners
and customs of his time, artistic or otherwise. From Redgrave's point of
view it was only right and proper that a woman should oil her hair, or

SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE

screw it up overnight in curl papers ; and the effect was " unrestrained."
To us it is anything but that. Without going into the relative merits of
oil and powder, it is now not even open to argument which most lends
itself to artistic treatment, and we are bound to admit that Lawrence,
with all his good fortune in other matters, did the greater part of his
work at a period which, for a fashionable portrait painter, could scarcely
have been less auspicious as regards the verdict of posterity.

It is doubtful if the time has yet arrived when a critical and unbiassed
judgment of Lawrence's art is possible. To us, apart from art, his style
is neither new nor old ; it is simply hackneyed through the vast number
of inferior painters who copied his easier qualities. We have just come
through the throes of an artistic revolution, and left all that savours of
" the pretty pretty " behind us. Yet we should remember that when
Lawrence made the style which in other hands degenerated into the
merest bathos, it was absolutely new — as new as " Waverley " or the
" Sketches by Boz " to the men who first opened their pages. Sir David
Wilkie said that Lawrence had " a perfection of execution never to be
equalled," while Fuseli declared his portraits to be " as well if not better
drawn, and the women in a finer taste, than the best of Vandyck's."
Fuseli, at least, was not a blind admirer, for it was he who said of Law-
rence's Satan that " it was a d d thing, certainly, but not the devil."

The place in art assigned to him by capable critics has varied in the most
surprising manner. A few years after his death he was scarcely con-
sidered, and Redgrave, writing in 1865, said : " It has taken a quarter
of a century to reinstate him — not to the place which he held in his life-
time, but to the true place he should occupy." Rightly or wrongly,
that " true place " has altered much since then, having been put slowly
but steadily higher.

ILLUSTRATIONS

CHILDHOOD'S INNOCENCE
(JULIA, COUNTESS OF JERSEY)

REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF
CHARLES WERTHEIMER, ESQ.

PRINCESS AMELIA,
DAUGHTER OF GEORGE III.

Photo, Hanfstaeii£l

WINDSOR

PRINCESS CHARLOTTE OF WALES

Photo, Braun, Clement

WINDSOR

MASTER LAMBTON

COLLECTION

Photo, Autotype Co.

OF LORD DURHAM

Plioto, Autotype Co.

NATURE

Photo, Autotype Co.

THE PROFFERED KISS

Photo, Autotype Co.

CHILD WITH FLOWERS

, Autotype C«

COUNTESS GOWER AND DAUGHTER

Photo, Autotype Co.

COUNTESS GREY AND CHILDREN

Photo, Miinsell

THE BEAUTIFUL MISS CROKER

II

COUNTESS BLESSIXGTON

Photo, Mansell

WALLACE COLLECTION

Photo, Mansell

ELIZA FARREN

rhoto. Autotype

MISS MACDONALD

Photo, Autotype Co.

COUNTESS GROSVENOR

LADY IRIMLESTON

Photo, Kewnes

REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF
JAMES ORROCK, ESQ., R.I.

1 6

MISS PHELEPS

Photo, Newnes

REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF
JAMES ORROCK, ESQ., R.I.

•7

Plioto, Newnes

A GIPSY GIRL

ROYAL ACADEMY (DIPLOMA GALLERY)

i8

LADY MARY BEXTINCK

Photo, Hanfstiiengl

CHATSWORTH

LADY CALLCOTT

Photo, Mansell

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

MRS. SIDDONS

Photo, Hanfst<iengl

NATIONAL GALLERY

MISS CAROLINE FRY

Photo, Hanfstacngl

NATIONAL GALLERY

Photo, Maxell

PORTRAIT OF A LADY

LADY CHARLOTTE GREVILLE

rhoto, Ifcinfstacngl

CHATSWORTH

CAROLINE OF BRUNSWICK

Photo, Newnes

SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM

CAROLINE OF BRUNSWICK

rtioto, Mansell
NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

26

SARAH SIDDONS

Photo, Man sell
NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

J. P. KEMBLE AS HAMLET

NATIONAL

Photo, MansM

PORTRAIT GALLERY

28

WILLIAM LINLEY

Photo, Hanfstaengl

DULWICH

GEORGE IV.

Photo, Emery Walker

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

SIR WILLIAM GRANT

(MASTER OF THE ROLLS)

Photo, Emery Walker

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

LORD \YHIT\YORTH

Photo, Rraun, Clement

LOUYRE

JOHN JULIUS ANGERSTEIN

Photo, Hanfstaengl
NATIONAL GALLERY

33

SIR JOHN SOAXE, R.A.

Photo, Ne-jines

SOAXE MUSEUM

34

SAMUEL WOODBURN

Plwto, Gray

FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM

35

WARREN HASTINGS

, Minsdl

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

JOHN ARTHUR DOUGLAS
(LORD BLOOMFIELD)

Photo. Manscll

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

37

VISCOUNT MELVILLE

Photo, Mansell

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

THE RT. HOX. HENRY BATHURST, K.G.

Photo, Hanfstacng

WINDSOR

39

CHARLES, SECOND BARE GREY

Photo. Manscll
NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

PRINCE OF HARDENBERG,
STATE CHANCELLOR OF PRUSSIA

Photc, Hanjstaetigl
WINDSOR

MARQUIS OF LONDONDERRY

Photo, Manscll

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY, KNT.

Photo, Mansett
NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

43

SIR JOHN MOORE, K.I!.

rhoto. Emery Walker

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

SIR GRAHAM MOORE

Photo, Emery Walker
NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

45

GEORGE CAXXIXG

Photo, Emery U'alket
XATIOXAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

BENJAMIN WEST, P.R.A.

Photo, Newnes

NATIONAL GALLERY

47

THOMAS CAMPBKI.I.

Photo, Mansell

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

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