Thomas Lawrence: Coming of Age

Disappointing online talk from London Art Week looking at the early life of Thomas Lawrence.

I say disappointing because, as the title suggests, it was meant to be on the early life of Lawrence based around a new book by Amina Wright who was one of the speakers. She started well and I was intrigued to hear more about how Lawrence was a child protegee, initially working from his father’s inn. However the chair of the event, Andrew Graham-Dixon, interrupted her narrative on a number of occasions making it hard to follow.

The other two speakers were interesting, Lowell Lisbon, on Lawrence’s drawings and Ben Elwes on finding a lost self-portrait from these early years but there was not as much concentration on the astonishing story of his early life as I’d have liked and, as someone who didn’t know a lot about the artists I didn’t feel I came out of it knowing a lot more.

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