Response to Sir Thomas Lawrence’s portrait of Amelia Angerstein and her son John Julius William

Wrote this for my application to History of Art at St Catherine's College, Oxford. Was meant to write a 750-word response to a picture to which I had first-hand access. This went through quite a few drafts, including some hasty iPad typing while on a school trip to London right before the deadline.

Portrait d’Amelia Angerstein Lock (1777-1848), épouse de John Angerstein, et de son fils aîné John Julius William (1801-1866) Sir Thomas Lawrence (Bristol, 1769 –– Londres, 1830) 1799; 1803 (pour l’enfant) Huile sur toile Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Genève, Suisse

Response to Sir Thomas Lawrence’s portrait of Amelia Angerstein and her son John Julius William

Jiaqi KANG

Written work

Applicant for History of Art (V350) at St Catherine’s College

International School of Geneva, Campus des Nations

This essay will examine the portrait of Amelia Angerstein and her son, John Julius William, by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Amelia was the daughter-in-law of John Julius Angerstein, the wealthy trader whose art collection would later form the nucleus of the National Gallery. Angerstein was part of a new class of merchants profiting from the emergence of capitalism whose wealth was not inherited but amassed. His extended family commissioned many paintings from Lawrence, the most fashionable portraitist of his time, as clear demonstration of their assets and affirmation of their status.

The portrait of Amelia and her son was originally painted in 1799, the year of Amelia's marriage, and in 1803 was changed "pour l'enfant". Evidence of the addition can be found in traces of brushstrokes beneath the child that suggest he was overpainted onto the folds of his mother's dress. A waxiness in some areas shows signs of thick layers of paint having been scrubbed with turpentine and subsequently covered. As an upper-class woman of the time, Amelia's fundamental role would have been to produce heirs. The painting thus highlights her fertility as a valuable family asset. In 1799, the potential of her motherhood is evidenced in the fact that her womb, covered by an ambiguously billowy dress, forms the focus of the composition where one might expect the subject's face; and in 1803, John Julius William was indeed the embodiment of her fertility. As the eldest son of the eldest son, he and the woman who produced him were significant enough to Angerstein to warrant a life-size portrait.

In 1810, Lawrence would make a chalk drawing of Amelia nursing an infant where her arm, forming a familiar heart symbol, envelops the child with warmth. Yet here, Amelia's image was not altered during the reworking, rendering her strangely unresponsive; there is no corporeal communication between Amelia and her son, with the latter pushed into a corner so that he is half-enveloped in the chiaroscuro of the heavy Romantic landscape. The shadow cast by the child's left hand is made of quick strokes whose dark tones seem inconsistent with the soft shades in the rest of the painting and whose vague shapes flatten his image, disconnecting flesh and cloth. The perfunctory manner in which the child is added deepens an emotional rift between the two subjects that fails to inspire appreciation from the audience.

In other ways the painting is relatively ordinary: it follows the contemporary trend of placing portrait subjects within a vaguely classical context to bestow upon them a sense of timeless divinity. It also demonstrates the nouveau riche desire to 'prove' one's status by showing an appreciation for the same arts favoured by the aristocracy. That the Angersteins could afford to wear white, a colour so difficult to clean, was another signifier of wealth. Despite these aims toward grandeur, however, the portrait differs from conventional images of affluence. Unlike Gainsborough's Mr and Mrs Andrews, where an imminent storm presages the fertility of the vast green fields that occupy the largest part of the canvas, Amelia is disconnected from her setting. The Angersteins' wealth is not tied to their estate, but to their enterprise. Amelia's clothing remains untainted by the soil beneath her feet - she appears to float. The setting itself, with its blurred details and vignetting, serves only as a contrast to the subjects' paleness (an inevitable result of a life of luxury and leisure, free from menial work) instead of expressing ownership.

Although seemingly an ordinary portrait on first glance, it in fact reflects an age that saw the rise of a new type of upper-class that made their fortune from trade as Britain expanded across the globe to become the major imperialist power with a thriving economy. The portrait and others were commissioned in an attempt to affirming and immortalising their status, a natural part in the process establishing a dynastic legacy for the Angersteins.

From a twenty-first-century feminist viewpoint, however, Amelia can be perhaps be viewed with a sense of alienation. Disconnected from her child and her surroundings, she gazes out at the viewer in a passive manner, as if jaded, or resigned. The key expectation of a woman of her status was simply childbearing and never to work. Thus isolated in the upper echelons of society, women like Amelia Angerstein had little opportunity for personal fulfilment. This apathy is perhaps inadvertently expressed in Lawrence's portrait.