William Lock of Norbury (1732–1810)

When Thomas Lawrence was starting out in London, his most important supporter was William Lock of Norbury Park in Surrey, a wealthy connoisseur and collector whose house was visited by the painters Joshua Reynolds and Henry Fuseli. Lawrence painted him in 1790, at 21. By tradition the portrait was done in a single sitting, and it was never finished. Look at the hand, which is only sketched in. Lock was so pleased that he paid more than the price they had agreed. A few years later French émigrés who had fled the Revolution settled at Juniper Hall, close to Norbury, and the Locks took them up. In 1793 the couple helped bring about the marriage of their friend, the novelist Fanny Burney, to one of them, the French officer Alexandre d'Arblay. The portrait stayed in the family, passing to Lock's daughter Amelia and her descendants, until it was sold in London in 1896.