After 1810, when the danger of this competition had passed with Hoppner’s death, Lawrence’s style was set. France and Italy came too late to strengthen a man who in so many ways was the spoilt child of fortune. Another reason for his weakness may be found in the desire to please. When he painted women he flattered them; when he talked to them he did the same. His children have a certain self-consciousness that does not belong to the children of Sir Joshua and Gainsborough; they can’t help posing and looking at their best, for their parents and relatives may have been expected to appreciate a little pose. Where men are concerned the strength of Lawrence lay in the masterful character of the sitters themselves, rather than in any force of hand or brain. Had he been called upon to paint common-place types, his reputation would hardly have been what it is to-day, but his sitters were the pick of the generation, men who played no small part in deciding the fate of Europe at one of the most critical periods of history. Reference has been made already to some of the greatest; of the others, he was extremely successful with John Kemble, John Wilson Croker, Curran, Sir James Mackintosh, and Lord Thurlow, this last portrait being the one at which, according to his own account, he laboured for thirty-seven hours without stopping or sitting down. Among his most successful portraits of fair women may be mentioned those of the Duchesses of Sutherland and Gloucester, Mrs. Arbuthnot, the Countess of Charlemont and children, the Countess Grey, Lady Ellenborough, Lady Leinster, Lady Emily Cowper, Lady Elizabeth Leveson-Gower, Miss Croker, and Lady Blessington. This is no more than a random selection; his portraits and drawings of fair women are numbered by the hundred.