English painter (b. 1769, Bristol, d. 1830, London). Thomas Lawrence was born in Bristol on May 4, 1769. At Devizes, where his father was landlord of the Black Bear Inn, Thomas's talents first became known. Fanny Burney, a prodigy herself, reports that in 1780 Sir Joshua Reynolds had already pronounced Lawrence the most promising genius he had ever met. When Thomas was 10, his father moved the family to Oxford and then to Bath to take advantage of the portrait skill of his son. At the age of 17 Lawrence began to paint in oil, all his previous work having been in pastel. In 1787 the family moved to London, and by 1789 he was challenging Reynolds. When Reynolds died in 1792, Lawrence was appointed to the lucrative post of painter in ordinary to the king. He soon became the foremost portrait painter in England, a position he maintained until his death. His portraits of women are models of beauty and elegance, whether the sitter be a tragic actress like Mrs. Siddons, a social figure like the Princess de Lieven, or a personal friend. At the close of the Napoleonic Wars, Lawrence was knighted and commissioned to paint the leading sovereigns and statesmen of Europe. When he returned to England in 1820, he was elected president of the Royal Academy; he handled the affairs of his office with tact and urbanity. He died on Jan. 7, 1830. Following the English masters of the 18th century, Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, and George Romney, Lawrence carried on the great tradition of society portraiture and raised it to new heights of dash and elegance, though not of psychological penetration. He was by no means an artist of the astonishing insight of Gainsborough, and he did not have the occasionally disconcerting originality of Reynolds. Lawrence had their faults: all were affected by the distorting demands of their fashionable clientele, and all succumbed to them. He had the least to say, and he reflected his sitters' own best views of themselves, yet even they must sometimes have been surprised at their own magnificence. Handsome his portraits undoubtedly are; all the women are strikingly beautiful, the men brave and distinguished. Lawrence enjoyed his great success. He lived for his work, never married, and was a prodigious worker. He was of an exceptionally generous nature, as an artist and as a man, with a rare talent for appreciating and encouraging the talents of others. He was an ardent collector of Old Master drawings; his collection, which was dispersed after his death,  Related Paintings of LAWRENCE, Sir Thomas :. | Mr and Mrs John Julius Angerstein | Queen Charlotte sg | Duke of Wellington on Copenhagen | Portrait of Princess Sophia | Mr.and Mrs.John Julius Angerstein (mk05) |
Related Artists:
Circle of Fra Galgario
painted Portrait of an Old Lady in 1720 - 1750
william witherington
William Frederick Witherington (26 May 1785 - 10 April 1865) was an English painter and academic. Born in London, he entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1805. Except for one year he exhibited annually at the Royal Academy from 1811 until his death. He was elected A.R.A. on 1 November 1830 and R.A. on 10 February 1840. He retired as an academician on 28th May 1863. His early works were mostly landscapes, but the influence of artists like George Morland (1763 - 1804) can be seen in the importance he gave to the figurative element in his paintings. Witherington enjoyed painting English scenery and never travelled abroad. As with many of his works, he does not depict the harsh realities of rural life, but instead records incidents of family life. Like his contemporary, Augustus Wall Callcott, RA, he creates a composition with a lively foreground of figures and animals, combined with a landscape with distant vistas glimpsed through the wood.
Antonio Joli
1700-1777 Italian Antonio Joli Gallery Born in Modena, he first apprenticed with Rafaello Rinaldi. He then worked in Rome with Panini and the Galli-Bibiena studio. He became a painter of stage sets for the theater in Modena and Perugia. By 1735, he had moved to Venice and stayed till 1746, when he traveled to Germany, London (1744-48), and Madrid (1750-54). In London, he decorated the Richmond mansion of the director of the King's Theater at Haymarket, John James Heidegger. He returned to Venice in 1754, where he became on of the founding members of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia. He traveled to Naples in 1762, and stayed there until he died.