Sir Thomas Lawrence PRA FRS (1769 – 1830) – IMS Photography

The Rt Hon. John Wilson Croker (1780-1857)

Ian Malpass-Scott — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 16:29:00 +0000

Oil painting on canvas, The Rt Hon. John Wilson Croker (1780-1857), after Sir Thomas Lawrence, PRA (Bristol 1769 – London 1830), 19th century. A half-length portrait, facing the viewer, wearing black. After the portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1823, engraved Samuel Cousins, published London, June 1829 (NPG D34239, D18676, D34240).

Provenance: Armstrong collection. Transferred by the Treasury to The National Trust in 1977 via the National Land Fund, aided by 3rd Baron Armstrong of Bamburgh and Cragside (1919 – 1987).

Text from the National Trust website

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Cragside, Rothbury, Northumberland
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: after Sir Thomas Lawrence, PRA (Bristol 1769 – London 1830)
Date: 1823 – 1899

Image Details
Date: 21 April 2026
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Telephoto Camera 52mm ƒ/2.4
Focal Length: 52mm
Aperture: ƒ/2.4
Shutter Speed: 1/32s
ISO: 640
Licensing: Image of a National Trust asset. This image cannot be licensed.

George IV

Ian Malpass-Scott — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 19:11:00 +0000

“George IV” by Sir Thomas Lawrence PRA FRS in the Great Gallery of The Wallace Collection, Marylebone, London, England

From The Wallace Collection website:

George IV (1762–1830) was an important figure in the history of the Wallace Collection. An avid art collector, before he became king in 1820 he was an intimate friend of the 2nd Marchioness of Hertford and on good terms with her son, the future 3rd Marquess, who advised him on his purchases and on occasions acted as his saleroom agent. Lawrence, the foremost portraitist of his time and President of the Royal Academy (1820–30), painted several portraits of the King, though he regarded this as his most successful. A remarkably informal image, it epitomises the elegance and refinement for which George was renowned. It was given by the King to his mistress Lady Conyngham. The portrait was engraved five times by 1841, and was mentioned by Thackeray in ‘Vanity Fair’ and by Dickens in ‘Bleak House’. Its purchase by Sir Richard Wallace was characteristic of his sensitivity to the history of the Collection.

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: The Wallace Collection, London
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Sir Thomas Lawrence PRA FRS (1769 – 1830)
Date: about 1822

Image details
Date: 8 December 2025
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/25s
ISO: 640
Licensing: Image of a Wallace Collection asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Portrait of Charles William Lambton (‘The Red Boy’)

Ian Malpass-Scott — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 18:00:00 +0000

This portrait of Charles William Lambton – aged six or seven – was commissioned by the boy’s father John George Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham, a Whig politician and MP for County Durham. Popularly known as The Red Boy, it remained in the Lambton family until it was acquired by the National Gallery in 2021. It is acknowledged as one of Thomas Lawrence’s masterpieces and, a sign of the image’s enduring popularity, it was the first painting to be reproduced on a British postage stamp in 1967.

Sitting on a promontory overlooking a moonlit sea, Lawrence portrays Lambton as a child wanderer, lost in contemplation of the sublime power of nature. The flowers opening next to him symbolise his young age. He is at the beginning of his journey through life, though this was cut short – he died of tuberculosis aged only thirteen. Lawrence may have been inspired by the work of Lord Byron or by William Wordsworth’s poem There was a Boy (1798).

Unlike Gainsborough’s famous portrait, The Blue Boy (1770, The Huntington Art Museum, San Marino) who wears a seventeenth-century ‘Van Dyck’ costume, The Red Boy is dressed in the contemporary children’s fashion of loose-fitting clothes. Several of Lawrence’s young sitters wear these red velvet ‘skeleton suits’ which were roomier and better for playing outdoors and which, by 1800, had replaced Van Dyck dress for children of wealthy families.

Provenance: Commissioned by John George Lambton (1792–1840), 1st Earl of Durham; by family descent to Edward Lambton, 7th Earl of Durham, who offered the painting through Christie’s; bought with the support of the American Friends of the National Gallery, the Estate of Miss Gillian Cleaver, Art Fund (with a contribution from the Wolfson Foundation), The Al Thani Collection Foundation, The Manny and Brigitta Davidson Charitable Foundation and through private appeal, 2021.

Text from The National Gallery

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: The National Gallery, London
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769 – 1830)
Date: 1825

Image Details
Date: 10 April 2025
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/31s
ISO: 320
Licensing: Image of a National Gallery asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Charles William Lambton (detail)

Francis Osborne, 5th Duke of Leeds

Ian Malpass-Scott — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 19:29:00 +0000

One of Lawrence’s most glamorous and flamboyant early works, this portrait of the fifth duke of Leeds was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1796, when, according to Joseph Farington, it triumphantly restored the artist’s reputation. Francis Osborne (1751-1799), who succeeded his father as Duke of Leeds in 1789, was educated at Eton and Christ Church, and pursued a career in politics. He was appointed Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs by William Pitt the Younger in 1783, but resigned in 1791. Lawrence’s portrait shows him in the robes of a Knight of the Order of the Garter, proudly standing in a dramatic landscape which incorporates part of his Yorkshire seat at Hornby Castle.
In: Whiteley, Jon, Catherine Casley, Colin Harrison, Marlia Mundell Mango, Timothy Newberry, Christian Rumelin, Catherine Whistler, and Timothy Wilson, The Ashmolean Museum: Complete Illustrated Catalogue of Paintings, (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum 2004

Provenance: Accepted by HM Government in lieu of Inheritance Tax and allocated to the Ashmolean Museum, 2014.

Text from Ashmolean Museum website

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769 – 1830)
Date: 1853-4

Image Details
Date: 28 March 2024
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Telephoto Camera 52mm ƒ/2.4
Focal Length: 52mm
Aperture: ƒ/2.4
Shutter Speed: 1/33s
ISO: 400
Licensing: Image of an Ashmolean Museum asset. This image cannot be licensed.