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Both dressed in white, a little boy leans onto the lap of a woman sitting in front of a smooth, sunlit boulder with a landscape to the right in this vertical portrait painting. Both people have pale skin with rosy cheeks. To our left, the woman sits with her body facing our right. Her round face also tips to our right, and she looks at us with gray eyes. She has an upturned nose and her full, pink lips are closed in a slight smile. Her long legs are crossed at the ankles, and dark gray slippers peek out from under the long hem. She wears a diaphanous, eggshell-white gown gathered under her bust. The short sleeves of the dress are puffy over sheer sleeves that extend to her wrists. A sheer veil is tied over her brown hair with a gray ribbon falls over her shoulders. She wears coral-red beaded necklace and drop earrings. Her hands rest in her lap and intertwine with the little boy’s hands. He stands behind her and leans onto her knees with both elbows. His round face is framed by a cap of honey-brown hair, and he looks at us with big, lapis-blue eyes. The boy has a small nose and bow-shaped lips. He wears a flax-yellow and mist-gray short sleeved garment with a bow in the back. Light falls on the pair from our left, and throws some of the foliage surrounding them into shadow. Burnt orange, gold, and white leaves and flowers surround the boulder behind the woman, and a view into a moss-green forest interior extends into the distance to our right.

Sir Thomas Lawrence

Lady Mary Templetown and Her Eldest Son, 1802

West Building, Main Floor - Gallery 59

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 215 x 149 cm (84 5/8 x 58 11/16 in.)

framed: 246.7 x 179.1 cm (97 1/8 x 70 1/2 in.)

Credit Line

Andrew W. Mellon Collection

Accession Number

1937.1.96

Artists / Makers

Sir Thomas Lawrence (artist) British, 1769 - 1830

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Overview

Like Reynolds and Romney before him, Lawrence preferred the "higher" genre of history painting but, through talent and necessity, became a portraitist. He was enormously successful in his own lifetime, was knighted in 1815, and elected president of the Royal Academy in 1820.

Although unschooled, Lawrence had a great natural gift for fluent linear rhythms and for the dramatic uses of light and color. Composed, gentle, and serene, Lady Templetown is a woodland goddess of otherworldly proportions. The purity and simplicity of the sitters' costumes draw the pair into a sympathetic unity that is further enhanced by the surrounding darker tones of the broadly rendered landscape. Lawrence animated the paint surface with accents of vibrant red in Lady Templetown's earrings and necklace, her son's cheeks, and in the landscape.

Lawrence's idealized presentation of his sitters in an expressive, theatrical landscape epitomizes the romantic style of portraiture. But Lawrence, like Reynolds, was also a passionate student of the classical past. His ideas on beauty were adapted from Aristotle's Poetics. He participated in the project that brought the Parthenon sculptures -- the Elgin marbles -- to England and owned a vast collection of old master prints.

More information on this painting can be found in the Gallery publication British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries, which is available as a free PDF https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/publications/pdfs/british-paintings-16th-19th-centuries.pdf

Provenance

Painted for the sitter's husband, John, 2nd baron (later 1st viscount) Templetown [1771-1846], Castle Upton, County Antrim; by descent to Henry, 4th viscount Templetown [1853-1939], Castle Upton; acquired c. 1890 by Baron Alfred Charles de Rothschild [1842-1918], London;[1] by inheritance to his illegitimate daughter, Almina Victoria, Countess of Carnarvon [c. 1877-1969], London; purchased 1923 by (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris); sold June 1923 to Andrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.; deeded December 1934 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1937 to NGA.

[1] The Rothschild provenance information was kindly provided by Michael Hall, curator to Edmund de Rothschild; see his "Rothschild Picture Provenances" from 1999 and letter of 27 February 2002, in NGA curatorial files, in which he cites relevant documents in The Rothschild Archive, London.

Associated Names

Carnarvon, Almina Victoria, Countess of
Duveen Brothers, Inc.
Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, The A.W.
Mellon, Andrew W.
Rothschild, Alfred Charles de
Upton, George Frederick, 3rd viscount Templetown
Upton, Henry Edward Montagu Dorington Clotworthy, 4th viscount Templetown
Upton, Henry Montagu, 2nd viscount Templetown
Upton, John Henry, 1st viscount Templetown

Exhibition History

1802: Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1802, no. 5, as Portrait of Lady Templeton.

1979: Sir Thomas Lawrence 1769-1830, National Portrait Gallery, London, 1979-1980, no. 17, repro.

Technical Summary

The medium-weight canvas is twill woven; it has been lined, but the tacking margins survive intact. The present stretcher is presumably larger than the original stretcher as there is an eighth of an inch of unpainted canvas visible along the top and right edges. The ground is slightly off-white, thinly applied. The painting is executed both thinly and thickly, with impasto especially evident in the whites; Lady Mary's gown and veil are broadly handled, but more worked than the background, with the shadows painted both under and over the white; much of the foliage is quickly and drily painted. The heads have been heavily reworked by the artist, and the smooth paint in these passages masks the prominent weave of the canvas. Lady Mary's right arm has been repositioned, as has the ribbon on her cap. The paint is abraded in places, and some of the impasto has been slightly flattened during lining. There is a prominent craquelure and discolored though not extensive retouching, especially disfiguring in the child's dress. The natural resin varnish has discolored to a moderate degree.

Bibliography

1799: Farington Diary, 5: 1759 (21 March 1802), 1773 (3 May 1802) and 6:2291 (7 April 1804).

1802: Monthly Mirror, 13 May 1802: 310.

1802: Morning Chronicle, 3 May 1802.

1802: True Briton, 3 May 1802, 2 June 1802.

1913: Armstrong, Sir Walter, Lawrence. London, 1913: 166.

1941: Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 104, no. 96, as Lady Templeton and Her Son.

1942: Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 241, repro. 16, as Lady Templeton and Her Son.

1949: Paintings and Sculpture from the Mellon Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1949 (reprinted 1953 and 1958): 120, repro.

1954: Garlick, Kenneth. Sir Thomas Lawrence. London, 1954: 60, pl. 48.

1960: Cooke, Hereward Lester. British Painting in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1960 (Booklet Number Eight in Ten Schools of Painting in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.): 22, color repro.

1963: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 320, repro., as Lady Templetown and Her Son.

1964: Garlick, Kenneth. "A Catalogue of the Paintings, Drawings and Pastels of Sir Thomas Lawrence." Walpole Society 39 (1964): 185, 306.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 73, as Lady Templetown and Her Son.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 64, repro., as Lady Templetown and Her Son.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 190, repro.,as Lady Templetown and Her Son.

1975: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1975: no. 531, color repro.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 368, no. 517, color repro., as Lady Templetown and Her Son.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 222, repro.

1989: Garlick, Kenneth. Sir Thomas Lawrence: A Complete Catalogue of the Oil Paintings. Oxford, 1989: no. 760, repro.

1991: Kopper, Philip. America's National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation. New York, 1991: 89, color repro.

1992: Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 156-158, repro. 157.

1992: National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1992: 154, repro.

1998: Adler, Shane. “Whiteness." In Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography: Themes Depicted in Works of Art. Edited by Helene E. Roberts. 2 vols. Chicago, 1998: 2:939.