Sir Thomas Lawrence P.R.A. 1769-1830

Half length, wearing a fur-lined red coat

The artist's studio sale, Christie's, 18th June 1831, lot 78;
W.S. Green, Old Burlington Street, London by the late ninteenth century, by whom sold to Arthur Tooth, New York;
Mrs Edward Browning, Philadelphia, by whom bequeathed in 1952 to Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine and by whom deaccessioned in 1991 

This sensitive portrait of the greatest patron of the arts in Britain in the important years of the early ninteenth century dates from circa 1810. It shows him in his late fifties at the height of his fame. The portrait represents a fascinating meeting between the great connoisseur and the precocious artist who had risen to fame at such an early age and had been elected member at the Royal Academy at the age of only twenty-five. Beaumont had at first been suspicious of Lawrence but he came to respect his talent and was generous in his praise for the younger artist.

Beaumont's passion for the arts dated back to his days at Eton where he studied drawing with Alexander Cozens and went on a sketching holiday with his tutor, Charles Davy, together with Thomas Hearne and William Woollett. At Oxford he went on sketching trips with the celebrated drawing master, John Baptist Malchair, and it was through his university connections that he met two painters whom he revered above all others, Richard Wilson and Sir Joshua Reynolds. After leaving Oxford he went on the Grand Tour with Margaret Willes his wife, staying in Rome where he took lessons from Jacob More and worked with J.R. Cozens. His passion for collecting art led to the purchase of three works by Claude and to the addition of a picture gallery to the Beaumont's house in Grosvenor Square. As an enthusiastic painter, he exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy and made frequent sketching trips.

He began to see himself increasingly as the great arbiter of taste, and his position as founder member of the British Institution gave him considerable influence. He welcomed artists to his ever growing collection of pictures which now included major Old Masters such as Chateau de Steen by Rubens, and Constable was one of several artists who were able to copy from the collection. He was an enthusiastic devotee of Constable, Wilkie and Haydon but was unstinting in his hostility to Turner. His increasing wish to improve the taste of the country by giving its citizens access to great works of art led to his generous offer of the cream of his great collection as nucleus of the new National Gallery. Perhaps his best tribute was that by the irrascible Haydon whose cause had been taken up by Beaumont: "His taste was exquisite, not peculiar or classical, but essentially Shakespearian. Painting was his great delight... His ambition was to connect himself with the art of the country, and he has done it for ever ... His loss, with all its faults, will not easily be supplied. He founded the National Gallery. Let him be crowned."

Lawrence first painted Beaumont in 1793 but this remains untraced. Farington records Beaumont sitting again to Lawrence on 23rd April 1808 and again on 7th May 1810, probably for the same portrait "but it was left in an unfinished state'. In his catalogue raisonne Kenneth Garlick suggested that this portrait is a version now at the Louvre, but recent cleaning of the present portrait has revealed its superior quality.

We are grateful to Kenneth Garlick for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.