Sir Thomas LawrenceArticle Free Pass Sir Thomas Lawrence, (born
April 13, 1769, Bristol, Gloucestershire, Eng.—died Jan. 7,
1830, London), painter and draftsman who was the most
fashionable English portrait painter of the late 18th and early
19th centuries. He was the son of an innkeeper who owned the
Black Bear at Devizes, where the young Lawrence won a reputation
as a prodigy for his profile portraits in pencil of guests.
Later he began to work in pastel, and in 1780, when his family
moved to Bath, he set up professionally. He had little regular
education or artistic training, but was working in oils by the
time he moved to London in 1787. There he studied at the Royal
Academy schools for a short time and was given encouragement by
Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was handsome, charming, and
exceptionally gifted. His early success was phenomenal, and when
he was 20 years of age he was summoned to Windsor to paint the
portrait, later widely acclaimed, of Queen Charlotte. He was
elected associate of the Royal Academy