In many respects the Academy chose wisely. Sir Thomas was a man who had moved and still moved in the highest social circles, whose pleasant manners made friends and conciliated foes; he was very popular with all save the most critical of contemporary artists. But, on the other hand, he was never a great teacher, and his addresses to the students were of little worth. He would seem to have entertained the idea of running a studio after the old Italian fashion; perhaps he had learned about it in Rome. There would have been a certain number of student apprentices to prepare the work, and he would have trained the cleverest among them to do still more. Unfortunately there was not enough money to start the required establishment; not all the foreign travel, the handsome presents, and the considerable fees had availed to stem the chronic leakage in the exchequer, and the scheme came to nothing. Sir Thomas resumed his place in London life, bringing an enhanced reputation; and all the old scandals being quite forgotten, the house in Russell Square was thronged with fair women who trusted to the artist, and not in vain, to make them fairer still. His portrait of Lady Blessington, reproduced here, called for recognition from Lord Byron in the stanzas beginning—
“Were I now as I was, I had sung
What Lawrence has painted so well.”
Both Byron and Sir Walter Scott spoke of the social graces of Sir Thomas. His manners would seem to have been distinguished, though his taste, generally correct, was not always above suspicion.
PLATE VII.—PORTRAIT OF COUNTESS BLESSINGTON
(In the Wallace Collection)
This portrait is one by which the painter is best known, and is the singularly felicitous expression of a very beautiful woman. It reveals the strength, and perhaps a little of the weakness, of the artist, and made a great sensation when first exhibited in London, moving Lord Byron to an expression of praise, to which brief reference is made in the text.
In 1825 he was called to Paris, where he painted Charles X., the Dauphin, and others, and received the title of Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. The Academies of St. Luke in Rome, and those of Florence, Venice, Bologna, Turin, Vienna, and Copenhagen, had given him honorary memberships; the Fine Arts Academy of America had done the same, and there were other bodies that had expressed their sentiments in similar form.
As he approached his sixtieth year, Sir Thomas would seem to have become conscious of failing health and the double burden of old age and loneliness. He had acquired every honour within his grasp, but he had lost his best friends through death, and monetary worries still troubled him. This last fact is the more surprising, because his prices were now very high indeed. They ranged from two hundred guineas for a head to seven hundred for an “extra length portrait,” and even at these high prices there was no lack of patronage. He had no extravagances of a discreditable kind, but he could not resist the chance of buying a fine drawing, whether old or new, and as, when his collection was sold after his death for twenty thousand pounds, it was said to have fetched far less than it cost, one large source of expenditure is accounted for. Then again the President was a singularly generous man, who could not refuse an appeal, and some of those who were round him were quick to take advantage of his weakness. Making every allowance for his expenditure as collector and philanthropist, it is hard to understand why he could earn so much and have so little. Even when he painted the portrait of Sir Robert Peel he wrote letters asking for the money before the work was finished.