HCR diary 18.12.1820 Mrs Aders talking about her father John Raphael Smith "Lawrence was also patronise3d by Smith, but becoming a great man refused a favour S: asked of him (to be the engraver of one of his pictures which he refused)"
letter from Mrs Aders in London to Robinson in Italy 10.1.1830 (of the Flaxmans & Denmans) "they have been doomed to suffer a heavy loss to them, which indeed hundreds will regret as well as them - Sir T Lawrence is no more - he died (I think the servant said) on Thursday night at 9 o'clock, I went there yesterday with my friend Miss James, and could not resist the servant's offer to see his remains, it was a sad, but most beautiful sight, his face is the perfection of beauty; he never was half so lovely when alive, for the exquisite form of his features could alone be seen in this perfect repose, it is like the head of a Roman statue, and now alas! the colour of marble - Chantry & Bailey have both taken casts from his head, so that we shall have his person as well as mind, worthily immortalised, his death was so sudden and unexpected that the shock has been very great in London - he was only two days ill - inflammation or as the man said perhaps gout in the stomach"
Thomas Lawrence (DNB 1769-1830)