George Henry Harlow was an English painter known mostly for his portraits. He trained first with a landscape painter, then with a portrait painter and finally with Sir Thomas Lawrence, the president of the Royal Academy. However, he did not complete any training. In 1804, Harlow presented for  the first time a painting at the Royal Academy: a portrait now lost. In the following years, he produced many more portraits, often of actresses and actors. In 1818, Harlow travelled to Italy, made friends with the sculptor Antonio Canova and completed a full-size copy of Raphael's Transfiguration in the Vatican in just eighteen days. He was elected an honorary member of the Roman painters' guild. Shortly after his return to England in 1819, Harlow died of a throat infection.