The Artist’s Left Hand

Sir Thomas Lawrence

1769 Bristol – 1830 London

Black and white chalk. Size of sheet: 20.9 x 17.1; 20.2 x 18.5 cm

Provenance: Sir Thomas Lawrence, Estate Sale, Christie’s, London, 20 May
1830. lot 77; Private Collection, London.

As for a self-portrait, Lawrence placed a mirror to the left in front of himself and drew the mirror image of his left hand.

There are several historical examples of artists drawing their left hand: Albrecht Dürer (Study of Three Hands, Albertina, Vienna), Théodore Géricault (The Artist’s Left Hand, Paris), Eugène Delacroix, in a work very similar to ours (Two Studies of the left Hand, Paris) and Pablo Picasso (The Hand, Musée Maillol, Paris). Michael Lucas Leopold Willmann (1630 Königsberg – 1706 Cloister Leubus) demonstrates impressively how he draws his left hand in an intimate etched self-portrait of 1675.

Lawrence drew several other studies of hands in red and black chalk as preparatory drawings for portraits. Study of Female Arms and Hand (1) as well as a similar study in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (2).

“It is as if the instrumental creator of the drawing became its motif, as though the hand, before getting down to business, started out by taking itself or its brothers as its subject” (3).

(1) Garlick 1964, p. 256.
(2) formerly with Colnaghi, exh. cat. May/June 1972, cat. no. 9, ill.
(3) Bailly. 2000, p. 6.

Bought within the art trade.