Birth Year : 1769
Death Year : 1830
Country : United Kingdom
Sir Thomas Lawrence, English portraitist, was born in Briston. One of the sixteen children of a tavern keeper, Lawrence began his career early as a self-taught child prodigy who supported his family by doing pastel portraits of the nobility and of important military figures in Bristol. He went to London in 1787, and entered the Royal Academy School of Arts. There he began to paint in oils, consciously imitating the style of Reynolds and thus becoming another in the line of portrait painters influenced by van Dyck and the Venetian artists. Lawrence also consciously imitated Reynold's polished sociability. He soon became Reynold's successor in popular favor. Lawrence began to exhibit at the Royal Academy shortly after his arrival in London. He became an associate of the Academy in 1791, and the following year was appointed Painter-in-Ordinary to King George III. He became a member of the Academy in 1794, received a knighthood in 1815, and was President of the Academy from 1820 until his death in London in 1830.
Lawrence was an excellent draughtsman and a brilliant colorist; he used his free brushstroke with distinction and great skill to create his romantic portraits. After the defeat of Napoleon, Lawrence traveled across Europe to Vienna to paint European monarchs, pretty women, the nobility, and the military heroes who had contributed to the allied victory. The freedom of his English technique influenced such Austrian artists as Agricola and Waldmüller. The last of the great English portraitists, Lawrence was unrivaled in excellence. He had no immediate successors, since English taste in the nineteenth century finally turned to landscape.
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Sir Thomas Lawrence
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Sir Thomas Lawrence
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Sir Thomas Lawrence
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Sir Thomas Lawrence
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Sir Thomas Lawrence
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