A boy, called the Rev. Ozias Thurston Linley

Ozias Thurston Linley (1765-1831) was the third son of Thomas Linley the elder (see his portrait by A.J. Oliver, DPG476). Ozias Linley was sent to Harrow School in 1780, and the precocious Lawrence had started creating his pastel portraits around 1779, aged ten. The sitter appears to be under fourteen, when Lawrence was indeed ten and was not working in such an advanced style. Lawrence scholar Kenneth Garlick reckons it might in fact be the work of "Ozias Humphry, Linley's godfather; but if it is too sophisticated for Lawrence it is too unsophisticated for Humphry. The traditional attribution to Lawrence may be accepted with reservation."