Artwork · 18th century · Sir Thomas Lawrence

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Elizabeth Farren (born about 1759, died 1829), Later Countess of Derby

Sir Thomas Lawrence1790Oil on canvas238.8 × 146.1 cm

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At a glance

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A woman in a white satin cloak trimmed with fur pauses on a walk through the countryside and looks back at us over her shoulder.
The English painter Thomas Lawrence painted her in 1790. She is Elizabeth Farren, a popular comic actress on the London stage.
The canvas is almost eight feet tall, and the painter was only about twenty-one when he made it.

Reading the picture

4 places to look closer

Tap a number on the painting to jump to its note, or a close-up to see that spot in the whole picture.

Zoom in on her face. Curly hair, powdered white, surrounds her face like a cloud. Her cheeks are pink, and her smile looks as if she is about to say something. One hand rests near a pale blue ribbon at her throat.
Zoom in on the back of the cloak. Lawrence laid short, quick dabs of white paint over the satin to make it flash with light. Up close you can see every stroke. Step back, and it turns into smooth, shining silk.
Drop down to the big fur muff. Over it hang a pair of brown leather gloves she has pulled off. Lower down is another pale blue ribbon that matches the one at her neck.
Zoom in on the landscape far off at the left. A wide valley opens between dark trees, and a tiny white building catches the light. In the meadow in front there are a few white dots that look like grazing sheep.

When it was painted

In the spring of 1790, visitors to the Royal Academy exhibition at Somerset House in London stopped in front of this huge canvas. The man who painted it had turned twenty-one that April. His name was Thomas Lawrence.

Lawrence was born in Bristol, and his father kept an inn. As a small boy he drew the guests' faces, and people called him a prodigy. He came to London in 1787, at eighteen. Within a few years he had a full-length portrait on the Academy's walls.

At the same exhibition he also showed a portrait of Queen Charlotte. So his big season paired a queen with a comic actress, Elizabeth Farren, one of the favorites of the London stage. Her devoted admirer was the Earl of Derby. But the earl was still married to a wife who lived apart from him, so the two could not marry.

Then came a small embarrassment. The Academy's catalogue listed the picture as Portrait of an Actress. A draft of Lawrence's letter to Farren apologizing for that label still survives in the Royal Academy's archive. The portrait became a talking point of the season, and it went to the Earl of Derby.

In the spring of 1797 the earl's first wife died. Farren left the stage that April, and a few weeks later she married him and became Countess of Derby. Lawrence had become the king's principal painter in 1792, and in 1820 he was elected president of the Royal Academy. The painting later crossed the Atlantic and came to the Met as a bequest from the collector Edward S. Harkness.

Look at the picture again. There is no stage here and no costume, just a woman in a white cloak pausing in a meadow to glance back. Standing in front of her, you can see why one word in a catalogue might have mattered so much.

The painter

Sir Thomas Lawrence

1769–1830

When painting this, the artist was about 21 years old

All paintings by Sir Thomas Lawrence →

More by the same painter

Isabella Wolff1803–15

Questions to think about

Look for itIn the grass at the lower left, can you find the little flowers in bloom?
Why?Why do you think Lawrence painted Farren turning back mid-step, instead of standing and facing us?
What about you?As an actress, Farren used this picture to show herself to many people. How much of the real person do you think one photo shared by a celebrity today really shows?

Same period