Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A.

Anonymous sale, London, Roseberys, 18 July 2018, lot 78 (as follower of Sir Thomas Lawrence);

Where acquired by the present owner.

'These unfinished portraits [...] represented the liveliness, sense of spontaneity and even sketchiness that Lawrence hoped to preserve in his finished portraits'.¹

This alluring portrait, left unfinished, of a young Elisabeth Wilson Patten is a rediscovered oil sketch by Sir Thomas Lawrence. It likely dates from circa 1822–23, and was presumably painted as either an engagement or marriage portrait when the sitter would have been around eighteen years old. As described by the inscription on the reverse, Elisabeth Wilson Patten was the daughter of Thomas Wilson Patten (1770–1827) and Elisabeth Hyde (circa 1778–1871) of Bank Hall, Lancashire. On 24 January 1823 she married John Buller Yarde-Buller (1799–1871), later Sir John Yarde-Buller and 1st Baron Churston of Churston Ferrers and Lupton.

In his catalogue raisonné of the artist, Kenneth Garlick mentions another unfinished portrait of the sitter in a private collection begun in 1823.² It is possible that Lawrence may have used the present sketch as a preliminary study for that picture. 

¹ A.C. Albinson, in Thomas Lawrence. Regency Power & Brilliance, A.C. Albinson, P. Funnell and L. Peltz (eds), exh. cat., New Haven and London 2010, p. 193.

² K. Garlick, Sir Thomas Lawrence. A complete catalogue of the oil paintings, Oxford 1989, p. 289, no. 856.