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Lot Essay
This three-quarter-length portrait of William Baker is a distinguished example of Thomas Lawrence’s portraiture from the first decade of the nineteenth century. The picture displays Lawrence’s characteristically bravura and gestural brushwork and constitutes an exceptionally rare signed and dated work by the artist.
Although Baker’s portrait was shown by Lawrence at the Royal Academy in 1806, the presence of his signature alongside a date of 1807 suggests the artist continued to work on the canvas after the exhibition closed. This was not in itself an unusual practice but for Lawrence to sign a picture was indeed a rare event. In a letter to Mrs Calmady, dated 25 October 1824, Lawrence acknowledged, ‘I believe five pictures would include all on which I have written them [his initials]’ (D.E. Williams, The Life and Correspondence of Sir Thomas Lawrence, Kt., London, 1831, II, p. 342). As Kenneth Garlick notes (loc. cit., 1989), the only other documented fully signed and dated work is Lawrence’s three-quarter-length masterpiece of Lord Londonderry (private collection), arguably one of the most romantic portraits from the golden age of British painting.
It was during this period that Lawrence firmly consolidated his position as the natural successor to Sir Joshua Reynolds, the pre-eminent portraitist in England until the latter’s death in 1792. Lawrence's work from these years reveals an increasingly ambitious and sophisticated approach to the arrangements of his sitters, notably in his portraits of Sir Francis Baring, 1st Bt., MP. with his brother and son-in-law (1806; private collection), Frances Hawkins and her son, John James Hamilton (1805-6; private collection), and The Children of John Angerstein (1807-8 (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie). These key portraits from the period also display the artist's delight in landscape painting, a hallmark of his finest work from the previous decade, and evident here in the masterfully captured autumnal foliage behind the seated sitter.
The sitter was the eldest son of William Baker (1705-1770) of Bayfordbury, Hertfordshire, and his wife Mary Tonson, daughter of Jacob Tonson, the London publisher. Educated at Eton and Clare College, Cambridge, he subsequently studied law at the Inner Temple before serving as a member of parliament from 1768 to 1807. He married firstly, in 1771, Juliana, daughter of Thomas Penn of Stoke Park, Buckinghamshire, and granddaughter of William Penn (1644-1718), Governor of Pennsylvania, with whom he had a daughter. In 1775, he married secondly Sophia, daughter of John Conyers of Copt Hall, Essex, with whom he had nine sons and six daughters. Baker's maternal grandfather, Jacob Tonson junior, was the nephew of Jacob Tonson the elder (1655-1736), the London bookseller and publisher who founded the Whig Kit-Kat club. Tonson commissioned from Sir Godfrey Kneller the celebrated series of forty-eight portraits of the club's members, the majority of which are now in the National Portrait Gallery, London. When the sitter's maternal uncle died without issue in 1772, Baker inherited Kneller's portraits and eventually hung them in the newly built library at Bayfordbury House.
Although Baker’s portrait was shown by Lawrence at the Royal Academy in 1806, the presence of his signature alongside a date of 1807 suggests the artist continued to work on the canvas after the exhibition closed. This was not in itself an unusual practice but for Lawrence to sign a picture was indeed a rare event. In a letter to Mrs Calmady, dated 25 October 1824, Lawrence acknowledged, ‘I believe five pictures would include all on which I have written them [his initials]’ (D.E. Williams, The Life and Correspondence of Sir Thomas Lawrence, Kt., London, 1831, II, p. 342). As Kenneth Garlick notes (loc. cit., 1989), the only other documented fully signed and dated work is Lawrence’s three-quarter-length masterpiece of Lord Londonderry (private collection), arguably one of the most romantic portraits from the golden age of British painting.
It was during this period that Lawrence firmly consolidated his position as the natural successor to Sir Joshua Reynolds, the pre-eminent portraitist in England until the latter’s death in 1792. Lawrence's work from these years reveals an increasingly ambitious and sophisticated approach to the arrangements of his sitters, notably in his portraits of Sir Francis Baring, 1st Bt., MP. with his brother and son-in-law (1806; private collection), Frances Hawkins and her son, John James Hamilton (1805-6; private collection), and The Children of John Angerstein (1807-8 (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie). These key portraits from the period also display the artist's delight in landscape painting, a hallmark of his finest work from the previous decade, and evident here in the masterfully captured autumnal foliage behind the seated sitter.
The sitter was the eldest son of William Baker (1705-1770) of Bayfordbury, Hertfordshire, and his wife Mary Tonson, daughter of Jacob Tonson, the London publisher. Educated at Eton and Clare College, Cambridge, he subsequently studied law at the Inner Temple before serving as a member of parliament from 1768 to 1807. He married firstly, in 1771, Juliana, daughter of Thomas Penn of Stoke Park, Buckinghamshire, and granddaughter of William Penn (1644-1718), Governor of Pennsylvania, with whom he had a daughter. In 1775, he married secondly Sophia, daughter of John Conyers of Copt Hall, Essex, with whom he had nine sons and six daughters. Baker's maternal grandfather, Jacob Tonson junior, was the nephew of Jacob Tonson the elder (1655-1736), the London bookseller and publisher who founded the Whig Kit-Kat club. Tonson commissioned from Sir Godfrey Kneller the celebrated series of forty-eight portraits of the club's members, the majority of which are now in the National Portrait Gallery, London. When the sitter's maternal uncle died without issue in 1772, Baker inherited Kneller's portraits and eventually hung them in the newly built library at Bayfordbury House.