Sir Samuel Romilly

Samuel Romilly was among the most principled public figures of the Georgian era — a reforming lawyer who spent decades campaigning against the death penalty for petty crimes, at a time when over two hundred offences carried the capital sentence in English law. Lawrence painted him around 1810, when Romilly was at the height of his reforming activity in Parliament, a decade before the criminal law reforms his work made possible were enacted by Peel and Mackintosh. The portrait's presence in the National Gallery reflects the institution's sustained interest in depicting those who shaped British civil society as much as its military and political leaders. Romilly's suicide in 1818, following his wife's death, was a shock that reverberated through educated London — his grief-driven death became itself a kind of commentary on the emotional vulnerability of the most publicly composed figures. Lawrence's portrait captures him before that tragedy, showing the humane intelligence and reforming drive that made him one of the most respected lawyers of his generation, a contemporary of Wilberforce in the ranks of those who tried to make British law more just.

The lawyer's sharp, intelligent features are captured with an unfussy directness that suits the sitter's reputation for clarity and principle. Lawrence keeps the palette dark and the composition simple, allowing the keen expression and upright bearing to speak for the man.