George Gordon Noel (1788–1824), Lord Byron, Poet

Lawrence painted Lord Byron around 1800, though the dating is debated — Byron would have been only twelve in 1800, making a later date more likely. Byron, the quintessential Romantic poet whose life and works defined an era, was painted by Lawrence as part of the artist's comprehensive portrayal of British cultural figures. Now at Trinity College, Cambridge, the portrait captures the poet whose Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan revolutionized English poetry and whose scandalous life made him the most famous Englishman of his age.

Lawrence renders Byron's famously handsome features with careful attention to the large, expressive eyes and full lips that contemporaries found so striking. The dark, romantic palette and loosely handled background enhance the mood of poetic melancholy that Byron himself cultivated as part of his public persona.