Charles Hope (1810–1817), as Bacchus

Young Charles Hope depicted as Bacchus at the University of Nottingham was a child who lived only from 1810 to 1817 — seven years — making this allegorical portrait a poignant document of a life too brief to be otherwise remembered. The fancy-dress portrait showing a child in mythological costume was a fashionable genre in late Georgian and Regency portraiture, combining the pleasure of child portraiture with the additional cultural resonance of classical allusion. Reynolds had established the mode with works like Master Crewe as Henry VIII and Lady Jane Halliday as Hebe, and Lawrence continued the tradition with his own child allegories. Bacchus, the god of wine associated with joy, creativity, and the abundance of nature, was an unusually exuberant choice for a young child's allegorical portrait, the vine leaves and grapes of his traditional attributes more associated with adult pleasure than childhood innocence. The University of Nottingham's collection, accumulated through gifts and purchases over the institution's history, holds this intimate work alongside other British paintings of the period. The child's brief life — he would have been seven when he died, assuming birth in 1810 — gives this portrait a particular emotional weight as the only visual record of a short existence.

The mythological conceit allows Lawrence to employ a richer, warmer palette than his standard portraits, with vine leaves and fruit adding color to the composition. The child's rosy skin and bright eyes are rendered with characteristic tenderness, the loose brushwork in the drapery contrasting with the more careful handling of the face.