1649-1723 Dutch (Resident in UK) Sir Godfrey Kneller Galleries was the leading portrait painter in England during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and was court painter to British monarchs from Charles II to George I. His major works include The Chinese Convert (1687); a series of four portraits of Isaac Newton painted at various junctures of the latter's life; a series of ten reigning European monarchs, including King Louis XIV of France; over 40 "Kit-cat portraits" of members of the Kit-Cat Club; and ten "beauties" of the court of William III, to match a similar series of ten beauties of the court of Charles II painted by his predecessor as court painter, Sir Peter Lely. Sir John Vanbrugh in Godfrey Kneller's Kit-cat portrait, considered one of Kneller's finest portraits.Kneller was born Gottfried Kniller in L??beck, Germany. Kneller studied in Leiden, but became a pupil of Ferdinand Bol and Rembrandt in Amsterdam. He worked in Rome and Venice in the early 1670s, painting historical subjects and portraits, and later moved to Hamburg. He came to England in 1674, at the invitation of the Duke of Monmouth, accompanied by his brother, John Zacharias Kneller, who was an ornamental painter. He was introduced to, and painted a portrait of, Charles II. In England, Kneller concentrated almost entirely on portraiture. He founded a studio which churned out portraits on an almost industrial scale, relying on a brief sketch of the face with details added to a formulaic model, aided by the fashion for gentlemen to wear full wigs. His portraits set a pattern that was followed until William Hogarth and Joshua Reynolds. Nevertheless, he established himself as a leading portrait artist in England. When Sir Peter Lely died in 1680, Kneller was appointed Principal Painter to the Crown by Charles II. In the 1690s, Kneller painted the Hampton Court Beauties depicting the most glamorous ladies-in-waiting of the Royal Court for which he received his knighthood from William III. He produced a series of "Kit-cat" portraits of 48 leading politicians and men of letters, members of the Kit-Cat Club. Created a baronet by King George I, he was also head of the Kneller Academy of Painting and Drawing 1711-1716 in Great Queen Street, London. His paintings were praised by Whig luminaries such as John Dryden, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, and Alexander Pope. Kneller died of fever in 1723 and his remains were interred in Twickenham Church (he was a churchwarden there when the 14th century nave collapsed in 1713 and was involved in the plans for its reconstruction). The site of the house he built in 1709 in Whitton near Twickenham is now occupied by the mid-19th century Kneller Hall, home of the Royal Military School of Music   Related Paintings of Sir Godfrey Kneller :. | Portrait of William Legge | Margaret Cecil Countess of Ranelagh (mk25 | Portrait of Caroline Wilhelmina of Brandenburg | Portrait of Elizabeth Colyear, Duchess of Dorset (1687-1768); wife of the 1st Duke of Dorset | Portrait of Caroline Wilhelmina of Brandenburg-Ansbach |
Related Artists:
Nicholaes Berchem
1620-1683 Dutch Nicholaes Berchem Gallery
William Scrots
William (or Guillim) Scrots (or Scrotes or Stretes) (active 1537-1553) was a painter of the Tudor court and an exponent of the Mannerist style of painting in the Netherlands. He is first heard of when appointed a court painter to Mary of Habsburg, Regent of the Netherlands, in 1537. In England, he followed Hans Holbein as King's Painter to Henry VIII in 1546, with a substantial annual salary of £62 10s, over twice as much as Holbein's thirty pounds a year. He continued in this role during the reign of the boy king Edward VI. His salary was stopped on Edward's death in 1553, after which it is not known what became of him, though it is presumed he left England. Edward VI, attributed to Scrots, Hampton Court. Portrait of Edward VI in distorted perspective, 1546.Little more is known of Scrots than that his paintings showed an interest in ingenious techniques and detailed accessories. Scrots was paid 50 marks in 1551 for three "great tables", two of which were portraits of Edward delivered to the ambassadors Thomas Hoby and John Mason as gifts for foreign monarchs, and the third a "picture of the late earle of Surrey attainted." Two full-length portraits of Edward VI in a pose similar to that of Holbein's portrait of his father, one now in the Royal Collection (left) and another now in the Louvre (below), are attributed to Scrots and are likely to be these two paintings. Scrots also painted an anamorphic profile of Edward VI, distorted so that it is impossible to view it normally except from a special angle to the side. This optical trick is similar to that used by Holbein in his painting The Ambassadors and in contemporary portraits of Francis I and Ferdinand I. Later, when the painting was exhibited at Whitehall Palace in the winter of 1591-92, it created a sensation, and important visitors were all taken to see it.
Giovanni Battista Moroni
Italian c1520-1578 was a North Italian painter of the Late Renaissance period. He is also called Giambattista Moroni. Best known for his elegantly realistic portraits of the local nobility and clergy, he is considered one of the great portrait painters of sixteenth century Italy. The National Gallery (London) has one of the best collections of his work, including the celebrated portrait known as Il Sarto (The Tailor, a member of the Fenaroli family, illustration). Other portraits are found in the Uffizi (the Nobleman Pointing to Flame inscribed "Et quid volo nisi ut ardeat?"), Berlin Gallery, the Canon Ludovico de' Terzi and Moroni's self-portrait; and in the National Gallery, Washington, the seated half-figure of the Jesuit Ercole Tasso, traditionally called "Titian's Schoolmaster", although there is no real connection with Titian. The Accademia Carrara (Bergamo) (Portrait of an old man). Ashmolean Museum (University of Oxford), Brooks Museum of Art (Memphis, Tennessee), Detroit Institute of Arts, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Hermitage Museum, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Kunsthistorisches Museum (Vienna), the Liechtenstein Museum (Vienna), the Musee du Louvre, Mus??e Cond?? Chantilly (Chantilly, France), Museo Poldi Pezzoli (Milan), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, National Galleries of Scotland, the National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Canada, the National Gallery, London, the Norton Simon Museum (Pasadena, California), Pinacoteca Ambrosiana (Milan), Pinacoteca di Brera (Milan), Rijksmuseum, the Ringling Museum of Art (Florida), Studio Esseci (Padua, Italy), University of Arizona Museum of Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Uffizi (Portrait of Giovanni Antonio Pantera) are among the public collections holding works by Giovanni Battista Moroni.