Part 2

The first three years that the artist spent in London were not associated with any striking successes, but in 1790 a portrait of the Queen and Princess Amelia attracted considerable attention, and pleased King George III., who liked British artists best if they had not studied abroad. The royal patronage came at the right time. Already Lawrence was beginning to experience the financial difficulties that never left him as long as he lived, no matter what his income might be. He was making an allowance of £300 a year to his parents, and for the rest, his earnings “melted,” says Allan Cunningham, “like snow on a thatch.” King George was royal in his patronage, and expressed to the Royal Academy his wish that the young artist should be made an Associate forthwith. To this suggestion there was great opposition, and in the end the difficulty was solved by making the artist a Supplementary Associate, the only one in the Academy’s history.

In 1792 great honours were achieved. The King appointed Lawrence to be his painter in ordinary, in succession to the late Sir Joshua Reynolds, passing over Romney, Hoppner, Opie, and others, whose claims to the honour were held to be greater. Nothing succeeds like success, and the Dilettanti Society, suspending their regulation that said nobody who had not crossed the Alps could join their brotherhood, elected Lawrence and made him one of their chosen painters. He painted full-length portraits of the King and Queen, to be sent as a present to the Emperor of China, moved from Duke Street to Bond Street, and raised his prices all round, charging one hundred guineas for full-length portraits, fifty for half-lengths, and twenty-five for heads. In 1794 he received the full honours of the Academy; a year later the poet Cowper sat to him, and was so pleased with the portrait that he invited the artist to Weston.

Soon after this Lawrence would seem to have had some grave doubt as to whether his gifts were completely expressed through the medium of portraiture. The dramatic sense was very strong in him--portrait-painting could not quite satisfy it. To be “master of the unlettered nameless faces” sufficed him no longer, and he started a series of big canvases that added more to his labours than his fame. Staying with his great friend Fuseli at a house in Pembrokeshire he saw the artist leaning over some rocks that stand above the Bay of Bristol. The pose gave him an idea for a big canvas known as “Satan,” that was painted in 1797, found its way to the Duke of Norfolk’s collection, and then to the Academy authorities. A year later he gave London its first view of “Coriolanus in the house of Aufidius,” and followed this with other classical studies--Hamlet, Cato, and others, for which John Kemble sat.

In the opening days of 1798 Lawrence proposed to Maria Siddons, and the family’s consent was given to the union. The engagement was brief. Within a few weeks he confessed to Mrs. Siddons that he had mistaken his feelings, and asked to be allowed to woo Sally Siddons instead. To this startling request Mrs. Siddons gave her consent, but kept the truth back from her husband and brothers. To Maria the shock was naturally a severe one, and for a consumptive girl, whose medical treatment consisted of confinement to the house and repeated bleedings, it may even have been a contributory cause of death. Be this as it may, and her correspondence shows that she did recover from the first shock, the truth remains that she passed away in October of the same year, and on her death-bed implored her sister not to marry Lawrence. In “An Artist’s Love Story,” to which reference was made in an earlier chapter, the whole story of the engagement and its tragic _dénouement_ is set out at length.

There seems no reason to doubt that Lawrence would have married Sally Siddons had he been able to do so, when Maria had passed from the scene, and that in years to come he was profoundly moved by her death. We know, too, that he died a bachelor, though the opportunities for marriage that came in his way were almost startling in their number; so it well may be that there were deeper springs of devotion and loyalty in his heart than were expressed by his pen. Sally Siddons died in 1803, when Lawrence was thirty-four years old, and had more than a quarter of a century to live. We may then give him the benefit of the doubts that have arisen in the minds of his contemporaries and biographers. Some still declare that Maria Siddons died of a broken heart, but the recently published correspondence throws a measure of doubt upon the statement; and fair-minded people will incline to the belief expressed by Allan Cunningham that “she died of a disease and a doctor.”

While the social tragedy was affecting his private life, Lawrence was making great headway in his profession and out of it. In society he was an established favourite; he had a handsome face, a fluent and honeyed tongue, he wrote agreeable verses, and made facile sketches, which he would give freely to his friends and acquaintances. His most intimate associates were Smirke, the architect of the British Museum, Farrington and Fuseli the artists, John Kemble the actor, and Mrs. Siddons, whom he painted as Aspasia as well as Zara, though he never approached the beauty of the Gainsborough Siddons in our national collection. Some of his paintings went to engravers, who paid big prices for them; and though after moving from Bond Street to Greek Street he settled finally at 65 Russell Square, he never entertained on such a scale as his position would have justified. In fact he seldom or never gave a dinner party, excusing himself on the ground that he had neither wife nor mistress to superintend one. His prices rose steadily; he took half his fee in advance, but was always in debt and difficulty, and frequently forced to borrow at a high rate of interest. A devoted and conscientious worker, he always stood to his canvas, and seldom spoke to his sitter. At a first sitting he would draw the sitter’s head, at the second he would start painting. He told friends that on one occasion he worked for thirty-seven hours consecutively, a marvellous feat for a man who never sat down to paint.

In the year 1801 Lawrence passed through a very critical time. The Princess of Wales sat to him at Montague House, Blackheath; he stayed in the house while at work on the portrait, spoke and wrote in rather indiscreet fashion, guiltless of everything save enthusiasm, and provoked a scandal of the first magnitude that alienated royal favour. The scandal grew and spread and was partly the subject of the commission of inquiry that sat several years later, and whose labours were known as “The Delicate Investigation.” Lawrence was not even referred to in the report issued by the commissioners, but he made a difficult position worse by going out of the way publicly to declare his own and the Princess’s innocence. For some time after the scandal was broached, the lady visitors to the studio in Russell Square were few and far between, and Lawrence was never as happy with men as with women. The genius of his brush was essentially feminine.

In the years wherein the sun of court favour was withheld, and fashionable women were less constant in their attention, he was nevertheless extremely busy, and was able to raise his prices in 1802, 1806, 1808, and 1810, the last date being the year of Hoppner’s death. His other rivals included Beecher and Owen. For one who had comparatively few expenses, a large income, and neither parents, wife, nor children to support, the general position should have been very satisfactory, but nothing seemed able to keep Lawrence in easy financial circumstances. Financial difficulties followed him as they had followed his father before him; neither his great industry nor his raised prices availed to keep him from all manner of small troubles.

The early years of the nineteenth century passed without any very stirring events apart from the appointment of the Commission for the “Delicate Investigation.” Lawrence kept his place, earned a great deal of money, spent a great part before he received it, met some of the greatest men of the day--statesmen, soldiers, _literati_, ecclesiastics, and the rest--and was a frequent visitor to country houses where he took part in private theatricals. Indeed he may be said to have survived the loss of royal favour very creditably. As the years passed, subduing all recollection of the scandal associated with Montague House, Blackheath, his name was brought forward again in Court circles, where he was greatly missed by the women, if not by the men. There was no other painter who could combine the portrait with truth and flattery in such exquisite proportions that they conveyed an impression of youth and beauty while stating all essential truths. The truth was well summed up by one of Sir Thomas’s biographers who wrote: “Lawrence lavished summer colours upon autumn and on winter, and gave to declining years the vigour of the life of youth.”

It had long been an ambition of the painter to visit Paris, and when in 1814 the entrance of the allied armies into the French capital opened it to travellers, Lawrence was prompt to take advantage of the situation. Now after many years he hoped to see the famous collection in the Louvre, enriched as it had been of late years by the thefts of Marshal Soult and others of Napoleon’s generals with a _flair_ for works of art. But before he could complete his work the painter was summoned back to London. On the intervention of the first Marquis of Londonderry, the Prince Regent had taken the proper and charitable view of the Montague House affair.

Lawrence was commissioned to paint for Windsor Castle a commemoration gallery of those who had restored the Bourbons. The sitters chosen were the Emperor of Russia, the King of Prussia, Blücher, and Hetman Platoff. The portraits were painted, and at about the same time, Wellington and Metternich sat to the painter. Lawrence recovered all the ground he had lost, and gained fresh honours in rapid succession. In the year of Waterloo he painted the portrait of the Prince Regent, who knighted him; in 1817 he painted at Claremont the portrait of the Princess Charlotte. To these years his biographers trace the beginning of his relations with Mrs. Wolfe, wife of a diplomat accredited to this country. Cunningham refers to her as the wife of a Danish Consul, Mr. Knapp says she was the wife of the German Ambassador, but the point is not worth investigating. Suffice it she was a clever, attractive woman, separated from her husband, and the artist seems to have established with her intimate but platonic relations. He was devoted to her, but, then, he had a very susceptible heart. The friendship continued until the death of the lady, whom the artist survived only a few months.

In 1818 a further and greater honour than any that had come his way hitherto was conferred upon Sir Thomas. He was sent to Aix-la-Chapelle to paint members of the Congress then sitting there, with instructions to proceed to Vienna and Rome. An allowance of one thousand a year for travelling expenses made the commission still more attractive, and the artist, free at last to travel and to work in the most stimulating surroundings Europe could provide, remained away from England for a year and a half. In his work he distinguished himself. His sitters included Emperor Francis of Austria, Louis XVIII., Charles X., Archduke Charles, Metternich, Techernicheff, Ouvaroff, Hardenberg, Nesselrode, Baron Gentz, Earl Bathurst, Lord Liverpool, the Marquis of Londonderry, the Duke of Cambridge, and Mr. Canning. In Rome the aged Pontiff Pius VII. gave him nine sittings, and he painted the portrait of the great Cardinal Gonsalvi, “the Pitt of Rome.” But it was not only to paint that he went to the Eternal City; he had much to learn, and some of the letters he wrote to London during his stay are remarkable for their sound judgment and insight. The supreme master of art for him was Michael Angelo, following him Raphael, Correggio, Titian, Sir Joshua, and perhaps J. M. W. Turner came in the order named. To the end Lawrence was faithful in his devotion to the art of the first President of the R.A. “I don’t see why British artists wish to travel abroad when we have Sir Joshua in England,” he said in his untravelled days. He was not heard to express this opinion again in the years when he had crossed “the narrow seas.” Eighteen months of foreign travel did much for him; he brought a wider mind and a bigger intelligence home with him; to say nothing of a collection of gifts from European rulers and honours from many academies of art. From the social standpoint it is hard to believe that life could have given more than it gave in 1818-19.

Lawrence was able to visit several Italian cities, and returned to London at the end of his eighteen months’ sojourn in the country, to find that Benjamin West had just died, and that he had been elected to succeed him as President of the Royal Academy. His attitude was dignified. “There are,” he said, “others better qualified to be President; I shall, however, discharge the duties as well and wisely as I can. I shall be true to the Academy and, in my intentions, just and impartial.” In giving his consent to Lawrence’s election, King George IV. presented the new P.R.A. with a gold chain and medal. King George also sat to him,[1] and was heard to say that Lawrence was “a well-bred gentleman.”

[1] The portrait in the Wallace Collection reproduced here.

In many respects the Academy chose wisely. Sir Thomas was a man who had moved and still moved in the highest social circles, whose pleasant manners made friends and conciliated foes; he was very popular with all save the most critical of contemporary artists. But, on the other hand, he was never a great teacher, and his addresses to the students were of little worth. He would seem to have entertained the idea of running a studio after the old Italian fashion; perhaps he had learned about it in Rome. There would have been a certain number of student apprentices to prepare the work, and he would have trained the cleverest among them to do still more. Unfortunately there was not enough money to start the required establishment; not all the foreign travel, the handsome presents, and the considerable fees had availed to stem the chronic leakage in the exchequer, and the scheme came to nothing. Sir Thomas resumed his place in London life, bringing an enhanced reputation; and all the old scandals being quite forgotten, the house in Russell Square was thronged with fair women who trusted to the artist, and not in vain, to make them fairer still. His portrait of Lady Blessington, reproduced here, called for recognition from Lord Byron in the stanzas beginning--

“Were I now as I was, I had sung What Lawrence has painted so well.”

Both Byron and Sir Walter Scott spoke of the social graces of Sir Thomas. His manners would seem to have been distinguished, though his taste, generally correct, was not always above suspicion.

In 1825 he was called to Paris, where he painted Charles X., the Dauphin, and others, and received the title of Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. The Academies of St. Luke in Rome, and those of Florence, Venice, Bologna, Turin, Vienna, and Copenhagen, had given him honorary memberships; the Fine Arts Academy of America had done the same, and there were other bodies that had expressed their sentiments in similar form.

As he approached his sixtieth year, Sir Thomas would seem to have become conscious of failing health and the double burden of old age and loneliness. He had acquired every honour within his grasp, but he had lost his best friends through death, and monetary worries still troubled him. This last fact is the more surprising, because his prices were now very high indeed. They ranged from two hundred guineas for a head to seven hundred for an “extra length portrait,” and even at these high prices there was no lack of patronage. He had no extravagances of a discreditable kind, but he could not resist the chance of buying a fine drawing, whether old or new, and as, when his collection was sold after his death for twenty thousand pounds, it was said to have fetched far less than it cost, one large source of expenditure is accounted for. Then again the President was a singularly generous man, who could not refuse an appeal, and some of those who were round him were quick to take advantage of his weakness. Making every allowance for his expenditure as collector and philanthropist, it is hard to understand why he could earn so much and have so little. Even when he painted the portrait of Sir Robert Peel he wrote letters asking for the money before the work was finished.

Happily the statesman was a good and understanding friend; not only did he entertain the artist very frequently, but he commissioned him to paint a gallery of distinguished Englishmen for his country house--a commission the painter did not live to execute.

In the late twenties of the nineteenth century, Sir Thomas discovered a serious state of mind and became a churchman. The death of Mrs. Wolfe, to whom reference has been made, in the year 1829, grieved him so deeply that he laid aside his brush for a month. The Irish Academy gave him its honorary membership, and the city of Bristol, in which he was born, gave its freedom, and these were the last of his honours. Those about him noted an ever-increasing feebleness, a failing interest in life, though he stuck manfully to his duty, and early in January 1830 the end came. He was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral by the side of Reynolds and Benjamin West. All the Academicians attended, scores of the aristocracy sent mourning coaches, and Sir Robert Peel was among the pall-bearers.

III

THE PAINTER’S WORK

If in our estimate of a man’s work we could pause to consider the difficulties under which the work was accomplished, there would be much to say for many of those who are lightly esteemed. But in criticism there are no extenuating circumstances; the artist, whether he work with words or pigment, notes or marble, is judged on his merits with as much justice as is ours to command. No judgment is final. John Ruskin described a Whistler nocturne as “a pot of paint flung in the public’s face,” but we value these nocturnes even more highly than Ruskin’s own faultless prose. We know that the critic was better equipped to write than to judge, and we have reversed his verdict. The history of all art, from the work of the early Tuscan and Umbrian painters, with their backgrounds of gold, down to the time of the French impressionists, who bring the wide spaces of air, sky, and sea on to their canvas, is the history of a constantly changing verdict. The men most heartily acclaimed by their contemporaries have often failed in their appeal to succeeding generations, while in other cases “the stone that the builder rejected has become the corner head-stone.”

As far as Sir Thomas Lawrence is concerned, it is well to remember that his first reputation was not made by artists, but by people whose acquaintance with the essentials of a great and enduring art is ever of the slightest. His gifts were many and attractive, but they could never have deceived the men who were his contemporaries, although Reynolds’ generous criticism might justify the idea that they did. Fuseli after declaring that he painted eyes as well as Titian, could find no other praise. Opie said, “Lawrence made coxcombs of his sitters, and his sitters made a coxcomb of Lawrence,” but then Opie, together with Romney, Hoppner, and others, had been passed over by King George III. when in 1792 he appointed Lawrence to be his Painter in Ordinary, in place of Sir Joshua deceased. Compared with his great contemporaries, we see at once that Sir Thomas Lawrence was by no means a great colourist, he had no marked skill in composition, the effect of more than one figure on his canvas is seldom pleasing, his backgrounds were never interesting or even distinctive. That he was handicapped by the absurd and artificial dress convention of his day is undeniable, but he was hardly as happy in dealing with it as were some of his contemporaries. Why then, we may ask ourselves, was Lawrence a favourite artist from the days when as a little boy he made crayon drawings of visitors to his father’s inn, down to the time when he was sent on a tour of the chief European capitals to paint Kings, Kaiser, and Pope? Why, while artists remained critical and were even grudging in the measure of justice they meted out to him did all the wealthy patrons of art prefer his studio to that of his contemporaries, face the heavy and constantly increasing charges without protest, and rejoice in the possession of the canvas that his brush had covered? The reason is not far to seek.

Lawrence looked upon his sitters with an eye that magnified all points of beauty or attraction and passed over the failings, the blemishes, the points that in more conscientious eyes might have made a portrait true rather than merely attractive. It was but necessary to have the beginnings of beauty, to have some attractive features, and Lawrence would go to them instinctively, they would be the foundation of his study, other points of less attraction would fade from the representation on canvas. It was his singular gift, not only to see beauty, but to pick out the aspects of the sitter that would give the most attractive result possible without absolutely rank flattery or deception.