Pinkie

Thomas Lawrence painted Pinkie in 1794, depicting Sarah Goodin Barrett Moulton, a twelve-year-old girl from a wealthy Jamaican plantation family. The portrait shows the girl walking through a landscape in a white muslin dress and pink sash, her hair blown by the wind — a composition clearly conceived as a companion to Thomas Gainsborough's The Blue Boy (1770), with which it is now displayed at the Huntington. Sarah tragically died the year after the portrait was completed. Lawrence, only twenty-five at the time, was already the most fashionable portrait painter in London following the death of Reynolds. The painting's combination of bravura brushwork and youthful innocence has made it one of the best-known British portraits.

Lawrence captures the windswept freshness of youth with fluid, energetic brushwork and a palette of pinks, whites, and sky blues. The dynamic pose against the landscape backdrop creates a sense of spontaneous movement and vitality.