The Angerstein Children

In 1787, an unknown pastel painter named Thomas Lawrence arrived in London. Just three years later, he had come so far that he enjoyed the privilege of painting a life-sized portrait of Queen Charlotte (London, The National Gallery). This success suggested that he, and not the older artists Hoppner and Raeburn, might be the genuine successor to Reynolds. He was showered with commissions, and even more importantly, became connected by ties of friendship to great families such as the Locks, Boucheretts, and Angersteins. In particular the wealthy banker John Julius Angerstein (1735–1823), a cofounder of Lloyd’s and advisor to William Pitt the Younger, was at once his fatherly friend, financial guide (the artist’s pecuniary circumstances were often muddled), and client. Lawrence helped Angerstein to assemble a collection of old master paintings, which was purchased after his death by the English government and became the foundation of the National Gallery, founded 1824.The present picture is among the numerous portraits which Lawrence painted for the Angerstein family. It was begun on 17 August, 1807, when Lawrence was staying at Woodlands House. Just two days later, he laments in a letter that he is obliged to execute this most difficult of all themes in an unsettled passageway. Everyone, including the children, ran back and forth, and he had nothing whatever to say about it. Whether for this or other reasons, the picture was never finished, as was often the case with Lawrence, but it was nonetheless exhibited the following year at the Royal Academy.The four grandchildren of the elderly John Julius Angerstein, two boys and two girls, are depicted playing in a park. On the right, detached from the others, the oldest child, John Julius Angerstein (1801–1866), holds a broom. At the centre, the youngest, Henry Frederick (1805–1821), clumsily handles a spade that is far too large for him, while his sister Carolina Amelia (1802[?]–1879) restrains him, and Elisabeth Julia (1803[?]–?) looks up at her brother. The artfully constructed, self-contained figural composition still stands in the classical tradition of the 18th century. The carefree atmosphere, and in particular the warm, radiant colours, set amidst the opaque white, glowing red, and dark background tones, identify Lawrence as a genuine Romantic. In particular, with portraits of children and mother and child groups, the notorious bachelor Lawrence created the most beautiful creations of Romantic pictorial art in England. Its expression ranges from innate impartiality to elegiac sentiment. Almost never does their seeming spontaneity betray his extremely protracted, precisely calculated manner of working. This picture, however, does bear traces of ongoing revision. A little pail formerly visible in the left foreground, for example, was later painted over; and the red curtain, a traditional symbol of social status that refers to the representative task of such portraits, was added only subsequently. Hennig Bock | 200 Masterpieces of European Painting - Gemäldegalerie Berlin, 2019