Samuel Laurence (also spelled Lawrence; 1812–28 February 1884) was a British portrait painter.
Life
He was born at Guildford, Surrey, in 1812, and early manifested a great love for art.
The first portraits which he exhibited were at the Society of British Artists in 1834, but in 1836 he sent three portraits, including that of Mrs. Somerville, to the exhibition of the Royal Academy.[1]
Early in life Laurence was brought into close relations with many of the eminent literary men of his time, and was on terms of great intimacy with George Henry Lewes and Thornton Leigh Hunt; but his most intimate friend was James Spedding, the editor of Bacon. Many of his portraits of them have been engraved, the best-known being those of Thackeray reading a letter, Carlyle writing at his desk, Harriet lady Ashburton (in Lord Houghton's 'Monographs'), Frederick Denison Maurice, Mrs. Gaskell, Archbishop Trench, and William Edward Forster. His portraits of Tennyson and Carlyle are engraved in Home's 'New Spirit of the Age,' 1844. One of his most successful portraits in oil is that of Leigh Hunt, painted in 1837, but never quite finished. It was exhibited in the National Portrait Exhibition of 1868, and photographed for Leigh Hunt's 'Correspondence,' published in 1862.[1]
He died at 6 Wells Street, Oxford Street, London, from the effects of an operation, on 28 February 1884, in the seventy-second year of his age.[1]
Family
Laurence married Anastasia Gliddon, cousin and adopted sister of Mrs. Thornton Leigh Hunt, and during his early married life he visited Florence and Venice. There, he diligently studied the methods of the old masters, and endeavouring to discover the secrets of their success.
In 1854, he visited the United States, and while staying at Longfellow's residence in Massachusetts, he drew a portrait of James Russell Lowell, which has been engraved.[1]
