Colonel Thomas Stanley

Colonel Thomas Stanley, painted by Lawrence in 1794 at 283.5 by 181 centimeters and at Manchester Art Gallery, belongs to his earliest major full-length commissions from the year after Britain entered the French Revolutionary Wars. The Stanley family were among the most ancient of Lancashire's great aristocratic dynasties, their connection to the Earls of Derby and the Stanleys of Alderley giving them a social authority in the county that dated back centuries. The enormous scale of this portrait — 283.5 by 181 centimeters — is among the largest in Lawrence's output and places it firmly in the grand tradition of military full-length portraiture that Van Dyck had established and Reynolds had perpetuated. At twenty-five, Lawrence was demonstrating that he could manage the largest and most demanding portrait format with the compositional authority that the Royal Academy's most senior members could not have surpassed. Manchester Art Gallery's holding connects the Stanley portrait to its Lancashire geographic origins — Manchester being the regional capital of the county whose aristocratic families like the Stanleys had shaped its political and social history for centuries.

The military portrait demonstrates Lawrence's early confidence with male sitters, the red coat providing a bold color accent against the dark background. The face is painted with the precise, somewhat more labored handling of Lawrence's earlier period, before he developed the freer brushwork of his maturity.