For eighteen months Harlow remained in the studio of Sir Thomas. A portrait had been painted of Mrs. Angerstein. In this Lawrence had introduced a Newfoundland dog, so skilfully represented as to excite the warmest admiration. Harlow, perhaps, had had a share in the painting of this dog, and he loudly claimed credit for it. He is said even to have intruded himself upon the Angerstein family, and to have represented to them how greatly the success of the picture was due to his exertions. Of course this conduct on the part of a pupil amounted to flat mutiny. Sir Thomas informed of it, sought out his pupil, and said to him: 'You must leave my house immediately. The animal you claim is among the best things I ever painted. Of course you have no need of further instruction from me.' Harlow withdrew abruptly. In a day or two afterwards he was heard of, living magnificently, at the Queen's Head, a small roadside inn on the left hand as you leave Epsom for Ashstead. When the host approached with the reckoning, it was found that the painter was without the means of liquidating it. It was agreed that the account should be paid by his executing a new sign-board. He painted both sides: on one a full-face view of Queen Charlotte, a dashing caricature of Sir Thomas's manner; on the other a back view of the Queen's head, as though she were looking into the sign-board, while underneath was inscribed 'T.L., Greek Street, Soho.' Sir Thomas, informed of this eccentric proceeding, said to Harlow:—
'I have seen your additional act of perfidy at Epsom, and if you were not a scoundrel I would kick you from one end of the street to the other.'
'There is some privilege in being a scoundrel, then,' answers the pupil, 'for the street is very long.'
So we read of the quarrel of Lawrence and Harlow, one of those stories so easy to relate and so difficult to disprove. But there are incoherencies about it. The portrait of Mrs. Angerstein was exhibited at the Royal Academy in the year 1800, some years before Harlow had become a pupil of Lawrence's. The speech about the kicking is a very unlikely one to have proceeded from Lawrence, while it is still more unlikely that Harlow would have received it so quietly. Had such language passed between them it is hardly possible they could have been on the footing of anything like friendship afterwards, yet we find Lawrence assisting Harlow in his picture of the Kemble family in quite an intimate way. Certainly there was a quarrel, and Harlow quitted Sir Thomas. A living writer says, in reference to the sign-board story:—
'I remember to have seen it as early as 1815. Some twenty years after, missing this peculiar sign from the suspensory iron (where a written board had been substituted), I made inquiry at the inn as to the fate of Harlow's Queen's Head, but could not learn anything of its whereabouts.'
It is not probable that Lawrence was disposed to condemn this more severely, than as one of those artistic freaks which clever caricaturing students are every day indulging in.
Thenceforth Harlow determined to set up as a painter on his own account. He would be a student no longer. He refused to avail himself of the advantages offered by the Academy—he would not draw there—would not enrol himself as a student. He would toil no more in the studios of others—he was now a full-blown artist himself. So he argued. 'Naturally vain.' writes J.T. Smith, one of his biographers, 'he became ridiculously foppish, and by dressing to the extreme of fashion was often the laughing-stock of his brother artists, particularly when he wished to pass for a man of high rank, whose costume he mimicked; and that folly he would often venture upon without an income sufficient to pay one of his many tailors' bills.' He seemed bent upon exaggerating even the extravagances of fashion. There is a story of his having been seen with such enormously long spurs that he was obliged to walk down stairs backwards to save himself from falling headlong. He had a craving for notoriety. If the public would not notice his works, at least they should notice him. Somehow he would be singled out from the crowd. People should ask who he was, no matter whether censure or applause was to follow the inquiry. So he dressed with wild magnificence and swaggered along the streets and laughed loudly and talked with an audacious freedom that was often the cause of his expulsion from respectable company. A glass or two of wine seemed quite to turn his brain; he was alert then for any frivolity, and he was not always content with so restricted a libation, when the consequences were even more to be deplored.
He now offered himself as a candidate for Academic honours. He was not a likely man to succeed, yet he did all he could to conciliate the more influential Academicians, and certainly he had merits that entitled him fairly to look for the distinction. He painted a portrait of Northcote, said to be the best that had ever been taken of the veteran artist, and the number of portraits of him was very great. He also painted Stothard and Nollekens, and the well-known and admirable portrait of Fuseli. With this he took extraordinary pains, had numerous sittings, and was two whole days engaged upon the right hand only—a long time according to the art-opinion of his day, when it was the fashion to finish a portrait in a very dashing style of execution, after one sitting, and in a few hours' time. Mr. Leslie allowed Harlow's portrait of Fuseli to be the best. 'But,' he said, 'it would have required a Reynolds to do justice to the fine intelligence of his head. His keen eye of the most transparent blue I shall never forget.' But the Academy would not think favourably of Harlow. In later days Northcote sturdily declaimed: 'The Academy is not an institution for the suppression of Vice but for the encouragement of the Fine Arts. The dragging morality into everything in season and out of season, is only giving a handle to hypocrisy, and turning virtue into a byword for impertinence.' There was only one Academician who could be found to give a vote for Harlow. This was, of course, Fuseli. He was accused of it, and vindicated himself—'I voted for the talent, not for the man!' He was seeking to estimate the fitness of the claimant for art-honours, by means of perhaps the fairest criterion. The Academy tested on a different plan. It was hard to say that Harlow's moral character rendered him unfit to associate with the painters of his day; yet such was the effect of the decision of the Academy.
Of course he was cruelly mortified, deeply incensed; of course he swore in his wrath that he would wreak a terrible vengeance upon his enemies. But what could he do? He could privately abuse the academicians corporately and severally wherever he went; and publicly he would paint them down. He would demonstrate their imbecility and his own greatness by his works. He took to large historical paintings—'Bolingbroke's Entry into London' and 'The Quarrel between Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Essex.' Unfortunately the merits of these achievements were not sufficient to carry dismay into the hearts of his oppressors. And what was even worse, no purchaser came for these ambitious works. He was driven to portrait painting again. He was dexterous in delineating character, was rapid in execution, had a respectable appreciation of colour. His first exhibited portrait was one of his mother; she lived to see him, in a great measure, successful, and died when he was twenty-two years old. A deep affection seems to have subsisted between the mother and the son. He was greatly moved at her death, and always mentioned her name with tenderness. He had soon no lack of sitters. He was recognised as being, in a certain style of portraiture, second to Lawrence only. And he next achieved a considerable success in a higher order of art. His 'Arthur and Hubert' was highly applauded by the public. It was painted for Mr. Leader, at the price of one hundred guineas. The patron, however, was less pleased with the vigour and glow of colour of the work than were the critics, and was not sorry to exchange the picture for portraits of his children. This was sufficiently galling to the painter's pride, but he was not rich enough to resent such conduct. He could not afford to close all dealing with his patron, as he would greatly have preferred to do.
The next picture—and the one by which of all his works he is the most popularly known—was that combination of historical art and portraiture known as the 'Trial of Queen Katherine.' The work was commissioned by Mr. Welsh the professor of music. It was commenced during the progress of the artist's portrait of Fuseli, who, examining the first drawing of the picture, said:—'I do not disapprove of the general arrangement of your work, and I see you will give it a powerful effect of light and shade. But you have here a composition of more than twenty figures, or, I should rather say, parts of figures, because you have not shown one leg or foot, which makes it very defective. If you do not know how to draw feet and legs, I will show you.' And with a crayon he made drawings on the wainscot of the room.