Attributed to George Romney (1734-1802) Portrait of Thomas Lawrence (1711-1783)

Attributed to George Romney (1734-1802)

Portrait of Thomas Lawrence (1711-1783)

President of Royal College of Physians, London

Oil on canvas; period frame

Provenance: Leggatt Brothers, 1897 sold to Frederick Williams and by descent

Dimensions refer to outer size of frame

Thomas Lawrence, physician, was the eldest son of naval officer Captain Thomas Lawrence and his wife, Elizabeth (d. 1724), daughter of Gabriel Soulden, merchant, of Kinsale, Ireland, and widow of a Colonel Piers. He was the grandson of Thomas Lawrence (d. 1714), first physician to Queen Anne, and physician-general to the army, who in turn was nephew of Henry Lawrence (1600–1664), Cromwell’s lord president of the council of state. Born in London he went up to Trinity College, Oxford in October 1727 and afterwards having chosen medicine as his profession, moved to London, where he attended the anatomical lectures of Dr. Frank Nicholls and the practice of St Thomas’s Hospital. He graduated M.B. at Oxford, 1736, M.D. 1740, and succeeded Nicholls as anatomical reader in the university, but resided in London, where he also delivered anatomical lectures. Admitted a candidate of the London College of Physicians in 1743, Lawrence was a fellow in 1744. After filling a number of college offices he was elected president in 1767, and was annually re-elected for seven consecutive years.

In May 1744 Lawrence married Frances, daughter of Charles Chauncy, physician, of Derby. They had six sons, one of whom was the eminent judge Sir Soulden Lawrence, and three daughters.

Lawrence was a friend of Samuel Johnson, who was one of his patients. Johnson, who corresponded with him in London about his own ailments, said that Lawrence was ‘one of the best men whom he had known’. He visited him late in his life when Lawrence’s health was deteriorating, also writing an ode to one of his sons.

About 1773 Lawrence’s health began to fail. In 1782 he had an attack of paralysis, and in the same year moved from London to Canterbury, where he died on 6 June 1783. There is a memorial to him in Canterbury Cathedral.

His brother William and his family were individually painted by Romney in 1785, 1786 and 1788.