Biography from AskART:
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Sir Thomas Lawrence was born in England in 1769. At the age of five he began selling crayon likenesses to the patrons of his father's tavern in Bristol; at twenty, he was the rage of London and at fifty he had painted most of Europe's royalty. He never lost a sitter because of an unflattering likeness. Reynolds had a great deal of influence on Lawrence, but with him the master's smoothness and graciousness became all too often softness and insipidity.
His most famous painting, "Pinkie", a child-portrait of genuine charm and dignity, is the very essence of English art of the Regency. The subject was Sarah Moulton-Barrett whose brother Edward was to become the notorious domestic tyrant whose daughter Elizabeth Barrett achieved immortality as poet and the wife of Robert Browning.
Lawrence's male portraits were almost uniformly distinguished but he was principally a painter of women. In 1815 he was knighted and he became president of London's Royal Academy in 1820. He died in 1830.
Written and submitted by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California.
Sources include:
Metropolitan Museum of Art Miniatures
Same of English Paintings in the Huntington Gallery
Masterpieces of Art, catalogue of the New York World Fair 1940
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