Thomas Lawrence

Thomas Lawrence was a self-taught prodigy. As a boy he drew portraits of travellers passing through his father's inn at Devizes, and by his early teens he was effectively supporting the family with pastel likenesses done in Bath. He had almost no formal training, arrived in London at 18, and within a few years was the most sought-after portrait painter in Britain.

His style suited the Regency perfectly, fluent and glamorous and a little theatrical, with silks and skin rendered at speed and sitters flattered into their best selves. He became painter to George III, then president of the Royal Academy, and was knighted. After Napoleon's defeat, the Prince Regent sent him across Europe to paint the sovereigns, statesmen, and generals of the alliance that had beaten France. Those portraits hang together today in the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle, a room built around them.

Lawrence lived beyond his means his whole life, generous and perpetually in debt despite huge earnings, partly because he spent lavishly on Old Master drawings. He never married. When he died suddenly in 1830 he was given a grand funeral and buried in St Paul's Cathedral, and the great collection of drawings he had assembled was offered to the nation, which declined it, so it was broken up and sold.