From Devizes the family had gone to Oxford, where they lived and thrived upon the proceeds of the boy’s pencil. Among his sitters were the Bishops of Oxford and Llandaff, Earls Bathurst and Warwick, Countess Egremont, and many others. The visitors to the inn at Bristol and Devizes had spread his fame, and Oxford was such a liberal patron that Thomas Lawrence, senior, moved to Bath, where he took a house at one hundred pounds a year rental as a boarding-house. Sitters were expected, and did not fail. Here it was that young Lawrence painted Mrs. Siddons for the first time, that Sir Henry Harpur offered to adopt him, and that Hoare the painter, to whom the boy was indebted for many hints, wanted him to sit for a picture of the youthful Christ. Small wonder that if at the age of seventeen, after he had taken up oils instead of crayon, and had copied a certain number of old masters--Rembrandt, Reynolds, Titian--his thoughts turned to London, the Mecca of all British art pilgrims; and he wrote to his mother with the unblushing confidence of youth to say, he “would risk his reputation for the painting of a head”--the reputation of seventeen years--“with any save Sir Joshua.” Gainsborough, Romney, and Hoppner were very much in evidence then, and the challenge would seem an odd one if it had been more than a lad’s confidential boast to his mother.
[Illustration: PLATE IV.--MISS GEORGINA LENNOX, AFTERWARDS COUNTESS BATHURST
Fine colouring and effective modelling are noticeable qualities in this, one of the painter’s highly successful portraits. Here we have a painting that does not suffer from the costume of the sitter and a rather daring but completely fortunate effect in the contrast between the curtain background and the dress. The landscape is, as usual, quite conventional and uninspired.]
So he came to London, entered himself as an Academy student, and took apartments in Leicester Fields, a district made popular by Sir Joshua. His father was behind him in all this; and as there was some money in hand, and a good send-off was necessary, an exhibition of the boy’s work was arranged. To make it still more attractive, the worthy innkeeper included a collection of stuffed birds recently acquired. Between the amateurs of art and ornithology the exhibition fell to the ground; it was a failure unredeemed. Happily the funds were still sufficient to enable young Lawrence to take a house in Duke Street, St. James’, and a studio in Jermyn Street near by. Hoare introduced him to Sir Joshua, for whom Lawrence’s admiration was ever whole-hearted. The great painter looked at his work, and remarked, “Study nature--study nature.” In years to come, looking at some of the famous early portraits, he remarked with the rare generosity that was one of his characteristics, “This young man has begun at a point of excellence where I left off.”