The Restless Genius of Sir Thomas Lawrence

The Portland Collection is home to four portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), an esteemed English painter of the 18th and 19th centuries.

In careful brushstrokes, Lawrence captures the likeness of the Bentinck family: Lord William, Lady Mary, Lady Mary Cavendish, and Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Charles. Curiously, only two of the paintings are finished.

The incomplete pair inspired us to uncover the story of Sir Thomas Lawrence, a child prodigy who felt ensnared by his own talent.

The Wunderkind

Thomas began drawing when he was just seven years old. He honed his skills making portraits of the guests at the Black Bear Inn in Devizes, an establishment kept by his father.

This was Lawrence Senior’s second attempt at inn-keeping, an endeavour destined to end in bankruptcy. So, when the business began to fail, Lawrence Senior began using his advantage.

Guests were welcomed to the inn with the famous words: ‘Gentlemen, here is my son, will you have him recite from the poets or take your likeness?’ (6).

When the inn went under in 1779, Lawrence Senior moved the family to Bath in search of portrait commissions for his son.

His child prodigy completed these in pencil and pastel, before eventually turning to oil paint, the medium for which he is known best.

At ten years old, Thomas had become the breadwinner for his family of seven.

A Different Destiny

In 1787, Thomas’ father moved him to London, where was admitted to the Royal Academy. There, the teen artist painted likenesses and showcased his portraits in exhibitions.

While he quickly rose to prominence for his portraiture, there are signs his passions lay elsewhere. One of these interests was historical painting.

When first learning to draw, Thomas spent “night after Night” copying prints of the Prophets and Sibyls of the Sistine Chapel. The artist later recalled, “I felt an Image of Grandeur in them that I was impress’d with by no other Work” (9).

Then, at thirteen, Thomas made a large scale copy of Raphael’s Transfiguration, for which he was awarded a silver palette and four guineas from the Society of Arts in London (8).

Throughout his career, Thomas incorporated the techniques of the Old Masters into his portraiture and spent his income curating an unrivalled private collection of drawings by Raphael, da Vinci and Michaelangelo.

His contemporary, Henry Howard, even critiqued Lawrence’s work, remarking that his artistic approach was suited more to historical painting than to portraiture. His pieces had ‘a depth and richness of tone more readily to be found in Titian, and the best Italian colourists’ (10).

It seems Thomas may have been nursing his unfulfilled dream of becoming a historical painter.  This was supposedly snubbed in his youth. On two occasions, guests of the Black Bear Inn offered him the opportunity to go to Italy and study the art he so admired, but his father refused to part ways with his prize horse (8).

Even after his father died in 1797, Thomas continued on the commercially rewarding path of portrait painting.

Burning Out

In the early 1800s, Thomas was restless. He spent his thirties churning out painting after painting, and became the most famous portraitist of the regency period. Some of his most notable sitters during this time include King George III, actress Sarah Siddons and Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger.

While he received many commissions, Thomas’ finances were far from steady. This is perhaps owed to the excessive sums he spent on expensive materials, like the finest pigments, turpentine, and more brushes than a sensible artist could dream of. In fact, upon his death, 1704 brushes were found in his studio (2).

Although Thomas chose to dedicate his time and money to his craft, it seems he felt trapped in his career.

In 1803, he wrote a letter to a friend, describing himself as ‘so harnessed and shackled into this dry mill-horse business’ (8). Thomas no longer saw himself as an artist, but an animal walking in circles to grind grain into powder. This image is so mechanical and tiresome, we get a sense of how futile and unchallenging he found portrait painting.

In another letter, Thomas laments that he is a “slave of the picture I am painting, as if it had living, personal existence, and chained me to it” (5). This was in reference to his reluctance to leave a canvas until he was proud of the piece, which demonstrates his commitment to his craft while betraying how joyless his efforts were.

At the turn of the century, Thomas was no longer the inspired and ingenious creative he was as a child. Instead, he stood at his easel under the force of an invisible hand, labouring in a career he found menial and monotonous.

This was the decade he painted the Bentinck family portraits.

The Bentinck Family Portraits

After years of working tirelessly to achieve his father’s dream, it seems Thomas had finally burnt out. He no longer felt challenged by portraiture and left many of his paintings neglected.

It is fascinating to see the stages at which Thomas had grown tired of these paintings.

In the Lord William portrait, Thomas had finished all but his fingers. As for the painting of Lady Mary, the artist had completed her face in great detail, began a rough background and left the canvas bare in place of her dress.

Looking at the features the artist perfected and the spaces he left untouched, we see a glimpse of Sir Thomas Lawrence, the talented and precise painter, frustrated and bored by his own work.

In the words of art historian Michael Levey, “many a portrait was begun with a fit of enthusiasm which soon cooled, and the painting was put aside unfinished to join the other, numerous, unfinished canvases accumulating in his studios” (8).

In 1813, Thomas himself explained ‘the difficulties of making up a picture after what is usually considered the most arduous part is finished’ (11). It seems Thomas would abandon a portrait once it became too understimulating for his genius.

Lord William Bentinck and Lady Mary Bentinck were only two of the two hundred sitters that Lawrence left incomplete when he died at age sixty from symptoms brought on by exhaustion.