News & events | Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker Ltd

London Art Week 2020: online and in person

25 June 2020

We are excited to be contributing virtually to London Art Week which goes live with a Preview on Thursday 2nd July. The gallery will be open, so do feel free to visit if you are in London. We are excited to be showing a number of new works, including a rare and very beautiful portrait by Thomas Lawrence. Drawn in black, red and white chalk on prepared canvas, an innovative method that Lawrence pioneered to produce some of his most engaging works, this portrait amply communicates why he was considered the greatest portraitist in Europe at this date, admired as much in Paris as in London. There is some debate about the precise status of Lawrence’s large-scale drawings on canvas, but it seems likely that he never intended to take them further, preferring the subtle rendering and immediacy of the various chalks on prepared canvas to the finished portrait in oils. Preserved in spectacular condition, this is one of Lawrence’s most complete and beautiful mature portraits in this medium and despite being reproduced in Frederick Christian Lewis’s lithographic selection Twenty Imitations of Sir Thos. Lawrence's finest Drawings, has remained largely unknown to scholars.