Page "Thomas Lawrence" Paragraph 7

Sometime before his eighteenth birthday in 1787 Lawrence arrived in London, taking lodgings in Leicester Square, near to Joshua Reynolds ' studio.

He was introduced to Reynolds, who advised him to study nature, rather than the Old Masters.

Lawrence set up a studio at 41 Jermyn Street and installed his parents in a house in Greek Street.

He exhibited several works in the 1787 Royal Academy exhibition at Somerset House, and enrolled as a student at the Royal Academy but didn't stay long, abandoning the drawing of classical statues to concentrate on his portraiture.

In the Royal Academy exhibition of 1788 Lawrence was represented by five portraits in pastels and one in oils, a medium he quickly mastered.

Between 1787 and his death in 1830 he would miss only two of the annual exhibitions: once, 1809, in protest about the way his paintings had been displayed and once, in 1819, because he was abroad.

In 1789 he exhibited 13 portraits, mostly in oil, including one of William Linley and one of Lady Cremorne, his first attempt at a full-length portrait.

The paintings received favourable comments in the press with one critic referring to him as " the Sir Joshua of futurity not far off " and, aged just twenty, Lawrence received his first royal commission, a summons arriving from Windsor Palace to paint the portraits of Queen Charlotte and Princess Amelia.

The queen found Lawrence presumptuous ( although he made a good impression on the princesses and ladies-in-waiting ) and she didn't like the finished portrait, which remained in Lawrence's studio until his death.

When it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1790 however it received critical acclaim.

Also shown that year was another of Lawrence's most famous portraits, that of the actress Elizabeth Farren, soon to be the Countess of Derby, " completely Elizabeth Farren: arch, spirited, elegant and engaging ", according to one newspaper.