After 1810, when the danger of this competition had passed with Hoppner’s death, Lawrence’s style was set. France and Italy came too late to strengthen a man who in so many ways was the spoilt child of fortune. Another reason for his weakness may be found in the desire to please. When he painted women he flattered them; when he talked to them he did the same. His children have a certain self-consciousness that does not belong to the children of Sir Joshua and Gainsborough; they can’t help posing and looking at their best, for their parents and relatives may have been expected to appreciate a little pose. Where men are concerned the strength of Lawrence lay in the masterful character of the sitters themselves, rather than in any force of hand or brain. Had he been called upon to paint common-place types, his reputation would hardly have been what it is to-day, but his sitters were the pick of the generation, men who played no small part in deciding the fate of Europe at one of the most critical periods of history. Reference has been made already to some of the greatest; of the others, he was extremely successful with John Kemble, John Wilson Croker, Curran, Sir James Mackintosh, and Lord Thurlow, this last portrait being the one at which, according to his own account, he laboured for thirty-seven hours without stopping or sitting down. Among his most successful portraits of fair women may be mentioned those of the Duchesses of Sutherland and Gloucester, Mrs. Arbuthnot, the Countess of Charlemont and children, the Countess Grey, Lady Ellenborough, Lady Leinster, Lady Emily Cowper, Lady Elizabeth Leveson-Gower, Miss Croker, and Lady Blessington. This is no more than a random selection; his portraits and drawings of fair women are numbered by the hundred.
Lawrence was a man who was prompt to take advantage of the opportunities that were showered upon him. One of his critics said of him, “His manners please everybody, save the two or three who look to the grain rather than the varnish.” This is very harsh and severe, for it need have occasioned no surprise had Lawrence been self-conscious and awkward, overbearing, or even pompous. His success might well have turned his head, and there are indeed occasions when his taste might certainly have been impeached; but, all things considered, he preserved a wonderfully level head, and in the latter days, when he was in as much social demand as anybody in London, he remained faithful to his brush--so faithful, that the work coming from his studio was always his own. He employed no assistants, though we have seen that he had the idea at one time of keeping something like a school in his own house. In private life he was fairly abstemious, he had no vices, nor did any young painter appeal in vain to him for advice or encouragement. Unfortunately those who sat at his feet learned the secret of his weakness rather than his strength, and a study of a man or a woman after Lawrence is something that defies criticism within the limits of courtesy, while showing that there was more in Lawrence himself than the keenest of his critics would always care to admit.