Portrait of a Man in a Blue Coat

When this portrait came to Boston in 1929, in the bequest of the collector George Nixon Black, it came with a famous name. It was said to show Charles James Fox, the Whig orator who led the opposition in the House of Commons through the long years of William Pitt's government. The museum no longer names the sitter. It calls the picture a portrait of a man in a blue coat and dates it to about 1790, early in Lawrence's career.

Its known history begins a century later, in Yorkshire, with another Fox. Samson Fox was a Leeds engineer who grew rich on steamships and railways, was mayor of Harrogate three years running, and in 1891 paid for a new building for the Royal College of Music in London. The portrait belonged to him. From his collection it went through two London dealers, Vicars Brothers and then Arthur Ackermann and Son, before it reached Black.