Sir Thomas Lawrence is generally regarded as one of the finest European portraitists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and this informal and arresting portrait of the politician Peniston Lamb (1770–1805) shows off his precocious powers at the start of his career.
Peniston Lamb was the oldest child and first son of Peniston Lamb, 1st Viscount Melbourne (1748–1828), and his wife Elizabeth (1749–1818), daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke, 5th Baronet, of Halnaby Hall Yorkshire. Lamb was the Member of Parliament for Newport from 1793 to 1796 and the Member for Hertfordshire from 1802 until his death from tuberculosis in January 1805. He remained unmarried and was described as 'gentle-hearted and engaging’. The Gallery’s group portrait of the Milbanke and Melbourne families by George Stubbs includes portraits of both Peniston Lamb’s parents, Lord and Lady Melbourne: Lady Melbourne is presumed to be shown on horseback because she was expecting Peniston Lamb, her first child. The Gallery also owns a portrait by Lawrence of Peniston Lamb’s sister, Emily, aged sixteen.
The format of this present portrait is simple, yet effective. Lawrence has positioned his subject with his head angled as though he is turning to look at us and, in doing so, Lamb’s left eye is placed at the exact midpoint of the canvas. The darkly impressionistic background includes on the left a cord and tassel from a curtain which partly frames the sitter in the manner of a painted oval – the young Lawrence seems to have taken this visual device from Van Dyck, whose work he studied closely.
As a sought-after society portraitist, Lawrence knew how to flatter his sitters. However unprepossessing he might have been in person, in Lawrence’s portrait Lamb is both elegant and striking. His hair is powdered grey, and his dark red coat, perhaps of velvet, with its dandy-like collar is the height of contemporary fashion. Always technically brilliant, Lawrence speedily and dexterously applied paint to suggest the contrasting textures of hair, coat and cravat, and used his idiosyncratically confident and expressive brushwork to convey the sitter’s youthful good looks and aloof and enquiring character. Lamb’s skin is pale and smooth and his rosebud lips sensuously parted, yet his eyes dart sideways to look challengingly at the viewer under a deft sweep of arched eyebrow. The voluptuous cravat tumbling from his neck and the ruffled hair provide a hint of informality and intimacy. The result is that the viewer is struck by a sense of momentary and fleeting engagement with the sitter as he turns to consider us. The encounter is made all the more engaging by the contrast in light, as the top-lit figure emerges from a gloomy backdrop; his illuminated face framed by the white highlights of his necktie and powdered hair.
In its directness of glance and characterisation, as well as the elevated level of its painting technique, the portrait of Peniston Lamb has much in common with the modernity of European portraiture of the period, particularly in France and in Spain, by artists such as Jacques-Louis David and Francisco de Goya.
