The present striking drawing of a young boy was executed in 1790, when Lawrence was only 21. The sitter, Thomas Pelham Clinton, was just four years old, yet he stares with such intensity and concentration out of the drawing at the viewer. Perhaps he had been instructed to sit still while his likeness was drawn? Whatever the reason for his pose, Lawrence was clearly taken with his young sitter, capturing his charm and innocence. Lawrence has used black and red chalksin the present work, which are particularly suited for depicting the child's mass of curly hair. A virtuoso draftsman, it is around this period that Lawrence executed some of his most successful and beautiful drawings, such as Mary Hamilton (British Museum, London) and Mrs Papendiek and her son Frederick (Metropolitan Museum, New York) and it was in 1790 that he exhibited his critically acclaimed full-length portraits of Queen Charlotte and Elizabeth Farren at the Royal Academy.

Thomas Pelham Clinton (1786-1804) was the second son of Thomas, 3rd Duke of Newcastle and 10th Earl of Lincoln (1752-1795) and Anna Maria Stanhope (1760-1834), daughter of William Stanhope, 2nd Earl Harrington. As the inscription on the reverse tells us, he was appointed Lieutenant in the 1st Regiment of Life Guards, probably sometime in 1802 and died, unmarried, in Gibraltar in 1804, aged only eighteen. His elder brother Henry, who inherited the dukedom, and his wife Georgiana Elizabeth, were painted by Lawrence in 1807 (K. Garlick, Sir Thomas Lawrence, A Complete Catalogue of the Oil Paintings, 1989, p. 245, nos. 601 and 602) and Georgiana Elizabeth's father, Edward Miller Mundy (1750-1822) was painted by Lawrence in 1792.

Lawrence has captured not only the likeness, but something of the character of the little boy, which makes the present work such an arresting drawing.