DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68073#0451
ENGLISH, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
425
In my men, then, I have thought of both, and of Titian and of Raphael,
as the subjects approached their style. In women, of Sir Joshua,
Raphael, Parmigiano, and Correggio. In children, of Sir Joshua and
the two latter. In my portraits of Kemble and of Mrs. Siddons, of
the highest Italian School.”
In 1825 the King of France gave Lawrence the Cross of the Legion
d’honneur. Lawrence died in 1830, unmarried, a fashionable “man
about town,” courted, admired, and not unlike Lord Byron, in some
respects. Lord Gower says:
“That his fame underwent a marked decline during the half-century
after his death in this country cannot be doubted; but within the last
few years a reaction has set in, which is tending to place him again in
the forefront of our greatest portrait-painters.
“Both as a man and as an artist Lawrence was impressionable, and
in his work was entirely influenced by the spirit of his period, a period
of affectation that frequently bordered upon vulgarity. If Lawrence’s
art in portraiture had been genius instead of talent of the highest
order, he would have created a public taste instead of slavishly follow-
ing that set by the Court or Society of his day. As it was, his work
was the ultimate expression of the curtain and column school of por-
traiture, and his success set a fashion that was followed for years
afterwards by innumerable portrait-painters. These, in imitating
the style, missed the spirit and perception by which Lawrence, tram-
melled as he was by the absurdities of dress and conventionality of
attitude and surroundings, was enabled to place upon his canvases
some suggestion of the actual identity of his sitters. And it was not
until the advent of George Frederick Watts and the late Sir John
Everett Millais that the effects of the imitation of the obvious points of
Lawrence’s style finally disappeared from English portraiture.
“Lawrence’s chief defect was that he turned his art too much into a
trade; he would have attained a far higher position had he contented
himself with painting half the people he did, and his name would
have stood on a higher pinnacle in the Temple of Fame. During the
last twenty years of his life he painted but little more, as a rule, than
the face of his sitter, the rest of the picture being completed by his
425
In my men, then, I have thought of both, and of Titian and of Raphael,
as the subjects approached their style. In women, of Sir Joshua,
Raphael, Parmigiano, and Correggio. In children, of Sir Joshua and
the two latter. In my portraits of Kemble and of Mrs. Siddons, of
the highest Italian School.”
In 1825 the King of France gave Lawrence the Cross of the Legion
d’honneur. Lawrence died in 1830, unmarried, a fashionable “man
about town,” courted, admired, and not unlike Lord Byron, in some
respects. Lord Gower says:
“That his fame underwent a marked decline during the half-century
after his death in this country cannot be doubted; but within the last
few years a reaction has set in, which is tending to place him again in
the forefront of our greatest portrait-painters.
“Both as a man and as an artist Lawrence was impressionable, and
in his work was entirely influenced by the spirit of his period, a period
of affectation that frequently bordered upon vulgarity. If Lawrence’s
art in portraiture had been genius instead of talent of the highest
order, he would have created a public taste instead of slavishly follow-
ing that set by the Court or Society of his day. As it was, his work
was the ultimate expression of the curtain and column school of por-
traiture, and his success set a fashion that was followed for years
afterwards by innumerable portrait-painters. These, in imitating
the style, missed the spirit and perception by which Lawrence, tram-
melled as he was by the absurdities of dress and conventionality of
attitude and surroundings, was enabled to place upon his canvases
some suggestion of the actual identity of his sitters. And it was not
until the advent of George Frederick Watts and the late Sir John
Everett Millais that the effects of the imitation of the obvious points of
Lawrence’s style finally disappeared from English portraiture.
“Lawrence’s chief defect was that he turned his art too much into a
trade; he would have attained a far higher position had he contented
himself with painting half the people he did, and his name would
have stood on a higher pinnacle in the Temple of Fame. During the
last twenty years of his life he painted but little more, as a rule, than
the face of his sitter, the rest of the picture being completed by his