Portrait of a Young Man

Portrait of a Young Man at Dorich House Museum, painted around 1800, represents Lawrence's informal male portraiture at its most psychologically direct — the unidentified sitter's natural bearing and the absence of social obligation allowing the painter to observe with the concentrated attention he brought to his most personally engaging commissions. Dorich House in Kingston upon Thames was the home of the Russian sculptor Dora Gordine, whose collection of her own sculpture and of Russian icons provided the primary content of the museum it has become; Lawrence's portrait occupies a secondary position in a collection with a very different primary focus, acquired to provide historical and aesthetic context. The young man's specific physiognomy — the direct gaze, the composed ease of someone accustomed to being observed — suggests a sitter from the fashionable London world in which Lawrence moved most comfortably, where confidence was the default social register. Lawrence's male portraits are often overshadowed by the greater celebrity of his female subjects, but his informal male studies reveal the same quality of patient individual observation that distinguished all his best work from purely formulaic portrait production.

Lawrence renders the unknown youth with the warm, sympathetic handling he brought to his portraits of young men. The fresh complexion and alert expression suggest a sitter in the prime of life, while the loosely handled background and costume focus attention on the carefully modeled face.