mely handsome in person, with fine, regular
features, brilliant eyes, and long, chestnut-colored hair falling to his
shoulders. He lodged close by Sir Joshua Reynolds--then near the end of
his career, and from him received much valuable advice. During Lawrence's
first years in London he attempted pictures illustrating classic art, but
without much success. Indeed he was never successful in large, imaginative
pictures, and during most of his career of more than forty years, confined
himself to portraits. The time was propitious for him: Gainsborough was
dead; Reynolds was almost blind, and had given up painting; and Romney had
no hold on the court and the leaders of fashion. Lawrence raised his
prices, and had all he could do. He adopted a more expensive style of
dress, and in fact lived so extravagantly that he never arrived at what
may be called easy circumstances--his open-handed generosity contributed
to this result. He early received commissions from the royal family. In
1791 he was elected an Associate, and in 1794 an Academician. The next
year George III. appointed him painter in ordinary to his Majesty. He was
thus fairly launched on a career that promised the highest success. In a
certain sense he had it, but largely in a limited sense. He painted the
portraits of people as he saw them; but he never looked behind the costume
and the artificial society manner. He reproduced the pyramidically shaped
coats and collars, the overlapping waistcoats of different colors, the
Hessian boots, and the velvet coats, adorned with furs and frogs, of the
fine gentlemen; and the turbans with birds-of-Paradise feathers, the gowns
without waists, the bare arms and long gloves, the short leg-of-mutton
sleeves, and other monstrosities of the ladies. And for thirty years his
sitters were attired in red, or green, or blue, or purple. He absolutely
revelled in the ugliness of fashion. Occasionally Lawrence did some very
good things, as when he painted the Irish orator and patriot, Curran, in
one sitting, in which, according to Williams, "he finished the most
extraordinary likeness of the most extraordinary face within the memory of
man." He always painted standing, and often kept his sitters for three
hours at a stretch, and sometimes required as many as nine sittings. On
one occasion he is said to have worked all through one day, through that
night, the next day, and through all the night following! By command of
the prince regent he pai