Charles William Lambton ('The Red Boy')

Edwin Landseer’s Monarch of the Glen or the Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I are two recent examples. Sir Thomas Lawrence’s The Red Boy – his portrait of Charles William Lambton at the age of six or seven, dressed in a red velvet suit and seated nonchalantly on a rocky promontory at night by a romantic sea – falls into this same category. It has been in private hands hitherto, but has now been acquired by the National Gallery to sit proudly among its holdings of the greatest of English portrait painting.  

The gallery possesses five other portraits by Lawrence, but none from his mature years, and this will be the finest of its collection. The angelic face, the informal pose, the glorious painterly treatment of the folds of the velvet suit, and the Byronic landscape behind: it is a beautiful painting, and reveals Lawrence as one of the greatest English portrait painters of the early 19th century. He is nowhere near as well known and admired as he should be, and this exciting acquisition will help to give him the attention he deserves.   

It is also a painting that marks the developing interconnection in those years between British and French art. It was painted in 1825, only a decade after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, but it was one of the first British paintings exhibited at the Paris Salon after the conflict, and puts Lawrence at the heart of a developing European movement that includes David,  Delacroix, Delaroche and Géricault. Not only is it a handsome work of art in its own right, and famous at its time and since, but it also stands as a key work in the history of European painting. 

The Red Boy had a major influence on future generations of European artists, and the mastery Lawrence shows in his handling of paint, insight into character, and rendering of the setting places him firmly in the finest traditions of Western art. After his portrait of Pope Pius VII in 1819 he became known as ‘the English Titian’. Perhaps it is not too far-fetched to think of him, in his depiction of  

The Red Boy, as the ‘English Raphael’.Lawrence had immense and early success. He was appointed Painter in Ordinary to the King in 1792 at the age of 23. He became a Royal Academician just two years later. In 1815 he was knighted and commissioned by the Prince Regent to paint a series of portraits for the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle. Most importantly, though, he played a major role in the creation of the National Gallery itself, and in 1824 he became one of the Gallery’s first trustees – and first artist trustee. How appropriate, therefore, that this masterpiece should now find its home in that same National Gallery. The painting will feature prominently in the special exhibition that the gallery will mount to celebrate its bicentenary in 2024, and rightly so. 

There is a small cluster of iconic portraits that are defined by the standout colour of the costumes that their young subjects are wearing. The most famous is The Blue Boy by Gainsborough, which has been in the Huntington Museum in California for the past 100 years. (The Huntington holds one of the most remarkable collections of British painting you can find anywhere in the world; it is a treat to visit.) The Blue Boy was last exhibited in Britain the year it left, exactly a century ago. Until now. It has returned for an exhibition to mark that centenary, in the National Gallery, on until 15 May. And The Blue Boy – who will (sadly) return to California shortly afterwards – can be seen in the same space as The Red Boy, who will now become a permanent resident here. There is a glorious serendipity in this conjunction of space and time.   

This work was acquired with assistance from the Wolfson Foundation.