Power Player

I got a lot of funny looks when I gushed over a portrait by Thomas Lawrence while attending a wedding last November. In an upstairs gallery of the mansion where the wedding took place, a portrait by Lawrence that I had never seen stood beside examples by Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, and Allan Ramsay, reuniting the four greatest British portraitists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Born April 13, 1769, Lawrence may have been the most talented of the bunch, a child prodigy who started drawing pastels of the patrons of his father’s inn and rose to become painter to first King George III and later King George IV . Lawrence’s portrait of Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of Brunswick (above, from 1804) shows the future queen consort of George IV in younger days. Lawrence alludes to her troubled marriage to the wild Prince Regent by placing her left hand, upon which she wore her wedding ring, in dark shadow. The full extent of Caroline’s marital woes most likely reached Lawrence’s ear during sittings for many portraits over the years. Rumors persist that Lawrence and Caroline even carried on an affair. If so, it was just another self-destructive behavior for Lawrence, who allowed alcoholism and financial irresponsibility to limit how far he could take his gift.

After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the Prince Regent IV commissioned Lawrence to paint all the great European heads of state involved in that victory, who had gathered together at the Congress of Vienna. Lawrence painted Pope Pius VII (above) in 1819. Pius VII received credit for fighting Napoleon in the end, although he attended Napoleon’s self-coronation and played ball with the emperor when it suited papal purposes. The real importance of Lawrence’s portrait of Pope Pius VII comes in the amazing fluidity of the drapery and textures. Lawrence recognized the great potential of popish pomp and squeezed every last ounce of juice out of it. Always aware of the history of art, Lawrence measured his achievement against that of Raphael’s Julius II, Titian’s Paul III, and Velázquez’ Innocent X. Lawrence owned one of the finest collections of Old Master drawings in the world, so the greats of the past were always near at hand. A classicist at heart, Lawrence even helped acquire (for good or ill) the Elgin Marbles for England. Lawrence produced many non-portrait works of great beauty and power, but it was with his portraits that he made his fame and fortune, thus overshadowing the depth of this great, forgotten master.

I like to compare Lawrence with John Singer Sargent. Both owned immense, precocious talent that made their art seem lightweight and all surface with no depth. Both, however, were more than just portraitists of the rich and famous, as scholars now struggle to establish. Lawrence’s portrait of Margaret, Countess of Blessington (above, from 1822) certainly captures the surface flash of her good looks and beautiful finery, but it also reproduces the vivacity of her personally. Host of one of the foremost literary salons of her day, Lady Blessington was much more than a pretty face. The first time I saw a portrait by Lawrence it was this sense of life in the eyes that intrigued me to learn more about him and his art. Sadly, I’ve also seen some lesser Lawrence, including the portrait at that wedding, which seemed a later work, when Lawrence’s light was beginning to dim. It’s amazing to tally up just how much a simple innkeeper son achieved through artistic talent and personal charisma (he almost became an actor!), but even that seems a paltry sum considering just how far he could have gone.

Kingmaker

The Van Dyck and Britain exhibition currently at the Tate Britain rightfully places Anthony Van Dyck at the origin of the golden age of eighteenth century portraiture in England, the “father” of Reynolds, Gainsborough, Ramsay, and Lawrence. Born March 22, 1599, while his contemporary Diego Velázquez – aggrandized in paint Philip IV of Spain, Van Dyck depicted King Charles I of England and Scotland to his best advantage. Sensing the increasing weakness of the Catholic Church as the Protestant Reformation dragged on, European monarch seized the opportunity to employ the fine arts for propaganda much as popes had for centuries. Van Dyck’s Charles I of England at the Hunt (above, from 1635) shows the king in all his merciless glory, celebrating the murderous hunt with a sneer. Charles I subscribed to the idea of the Divine Right of Kings, that god-given right of royalty to the throne that no earthly power could deny. Charles I fought with anyone and everyone, including his own parliament. Popularity was not a priority. Van Dyck here lavishes on the king the brilliant brushwork he learned from Peter Paul Rubens, giving the mortal king an almost mythical sheen reserved for Olympic gods. Charles I, of course, believed it was his due.

During his reign it was almost as if Charles I courted controversy. He married Henrietta Maria of France, a Catholic, over the objections of parliament and the English people, who were weary of decades of religious strife tearing the nation apart. Van Dyck painting of Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria with Charles, Prince of Wales and Princess Mary (above, from 1632) stood as a big middle finger to the country. Charles I set Van Dyck up as the official court painter and provided him with a studio close enough that the royals could walk back and forth from their regular sittings. Van Dyck became absurdly rich by the standards of artists of the time and even scored a knighthood for his work. Soon the appeal of being painted by Van Dyck spread to the rest of English nobility and Van Dyck became the go-to artist for those looking to immortalize their social standing.


Making Charles I look good was literally a tall order. To create the illusion of grandeur for a king that stood less than five feet tall, as Charles I did, Van Dyck resorted to many tricks, the most notable of which was the equestrian portrait. Van Dyck’s Charles I on Horseback (above, from 1635) raises the king up while lowering the sights of the viewer. The low horizon makes us feel as if we’re standing at stirrup level, craning our neck up at a towering monarch rather than a diminutive despot. Charles I’s antics eventually led to the English Civil War and the Cromwellian Interregnum. After a series of battles, Charles I was captured and tried and literally cut down to size—headfirst. The head that Van Dyck painted over and over fell victim to regicide. After Charles II regained the throne in 1660, Charles I was canonized by the Church of England, but Van Dyck had canonized him long before.

The Art of Love

Ovid’s got nothing on this pair. Many years of love and laughter to Lisa and Paul (above). Annie and I attended their beautiful wedding at the majestic Glen Foerd Mansion just north of Philadelphia along the Delaware River. From the elegant ceremony to the great food to the riotous dancing, it was a night to remember for everyone. (Annie thinks Lisa’s a genius for circumventing the whole “who’s going to sit with whom” drama of a seating arrangement by letting people sit wherever and with whomever they wanted.)

An added delight for me was the chance to see the mansion’s art gallery. Annie and I made our way upstairs to the gallery during the cocktail hour and the first thing that caught my eye was a large portrait centered on the far wall. I immediately said to Annie, “That’s a Lawrence!” And it was by Sir Thomas Lawrence, one of my favorite portraitists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. (I wasn’t allowed to take photos in the gallery, but a photo appears here. The Lawrence is the large full-figure portrait at the end of the hall flanked by two smaller portraits.) In terms of composition and style, the Glen Foerd portrait reminded me of Lawrence’s portrait of Elizabeth Farren at the Met, but this portrait didn’t have the same liveliness. Lawrence at his best paints eyes with a startling energy and life, but these were a little lifeless, leading me to suspect that it was a later, lesser work, but still interesting. Surrounding the Lawrence were examples of the work of all the other great British portraitists of the period: Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, and Allan Ramsey (a portrait of Queen Charlotte herself). The Big Four of the time of King George III were all there.

Annie and I then toured the room and saw a Rembrandt (or at least attributed to the school of Rembrandt), a Rubens, an early Van Gogh from the early The Potato Eaters period, and a Monet landscape. My head was still spinning as Annie and I made our way down the stairs for the toasts and post-cocktail hour festivities.

So, once again, all the best, Lisa and Paul, and thanks for giving us a night out without Alex and a chance to see the beauty of the past as well as the beginning of your beautiful future together. Cheers!

No Ordinary Painter

After taking the Grand Tour, and painting the portraits of others on that nineteenth century rite of cultural passage, Allan Ramsay found himself named “Painter in Ordinary” to England’s King George III, besting the greatest portraitists in England for the post. Born October 17, 1713, Ramsay painted the king in full regalia in his Portrait of George III (above, from 1762). Since the days of Elizabeth I, royal portraiture carried a giant load of metaphorical weight. Ramsay’s relaxed, warm style suited the new “look” that the king wanted for himself and the royal family—still seated firmly in the position of power but also conscious of the oncoming Age of Enlightenment and its challenges to entrenched, enthroned authority. Whereas Elizabeth I requested portraits posing her literally astride the globe like a colossus with all traces of humanity covered up by voluminous gowns, George III wanted viewers to see him as a man first and foremost, albeit a man with considerable power. Ramsay, the “Painter in Ordinary,” made the ordinary look extraordinary with his own extraordinary skills.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, and Sir Thomas Lawrence would follow Ramsay’s lead as they founded the golden age of British portraiture in the generation just after Ramsay’s peak years. That trio followed Ramsay not only in portraying the trappings of power, but also in painting more tender, “behind the throne” scenes such as Ramsay’s Queen Charlotte with her Two Children (above, from 1765). Queen Charlotte widely patronized the arts and clearly recognized the more subtle skills of Ramsay. Instead of asking for the royal treatment, Queen Charlotte chose to have her and her two children painted more naturally, as if they were simply a well-off mother with her beloved children and not the queen and the heirs to the throne. Ramsay’s skill in painting the children with the same tenderness shown to them by their mother matches the attentiveness he gives to the beautiful fabrics they wear.

Ramsay’s talents extended beyond just the visual arts. Like his father, also Allan Ramsay, Ramsay wrote poetry and dabbled in other forms of writing, cultivating the rich, cultured existence of a gentleman of the time. Ramsay certainly knew the works of David Hume when he painted his portrait (above) in 1766. Hume’s naturalistic philosophy based on the idea that reality is only what we perceive empirically and not something we can reason out, succinctly described in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (bane of freshman Philosophy students everywhere, myself included), fits in well with Ramsay’s style of painting. Rather than construct a grand narrative and alter the facts to fit that narrative, Ramsay instead painted exactly what was before him—the grand and the small, the superhuman and the humanly fragile. The gentle treatment of Hume in his portrait may attest to Ramsay’s finding of a kindred spirit in the philosopher. Sadly, Ramsay fell from a ladder in 1770 and injured his painting arm beyond repair. After finishing one last royal portrait despite excruciating pain, Ramsay left his post and an assistant completed the unfinished works. Ramsay spent his final years in Italy, writing and reading yet always pining for the days when he could paint the ordinary in his extraordinary fashion.