The Two Sons of the 1st Earl of Talbot is a 1793 double portrait painting by English portrait painter and President of the Royal Academy Thomas Lawrence. This work is located in the is in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, Germany.
Analysis of The Two Sons of the 1st Earl of Talbot
This portrait of the sons of British peer and politician John Chetwynd-Talbot shows two boys in the epitome of aristocratic self-assurance. The red-haired boy to the left gestures out towards the background landscape in an act of proprietorship over the estate and its deer while the younger dark-haired boy confidently looks out at the viewer as he restrains their dog.
Thomas Lawrence’s landscape and trees are wispily painted with an assurance that matches his subject matter, and also looks forward beyond classicism towards the soon-to-arrive Romantic era with the prioritizing of mood over clarity.