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 :. | Self portrait | Edward and Lady Mary Howard | Portrait of the Artist | Portrait of Caroline Wilhelmina of Brandenburg | Portrait of Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset |
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Simon de Vos
Simon de Vos (Antwerp, 20 October 1603-15 October 1676, Antwerp) was a Flemish Baroque painter of genre and cabinet pictures. De Vos studied with Cornelis de Vos (1603-76), to whom he is not related, from 1615 until 1620. In 1620 he joined Antwerp's guild of St. Luke, and then he probably travelled to Rome where he came under the influence of the "low-life" genre paintings of the Bentvueghels and the bambocciate. A Caravaggesque influence, by way of the German painter Johann Liss active in Italy during the 1620s is discernible in De Vos's paintings from this time on. In contrast to the earlier "low-life" paintings, works from the late 1620s until around 1640, which were made after returning to Antwerp, are mostly small "merry company" and courtly genre scenes reminiscent of contemporary Dutch painters Dirck Hals and Pieter Codde. After 1640, De Vos turned away from genre scenes altogether and painted mostly small cabinet paintings of history subjects, influenced stylistically at first by Peter Paul Rubens and then increasingly by Anthony van Dyck. Examples include The Beheading of St. Paul (1648) in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp. He married Catharina van Utrecht, the sister of Adriaen van Utrecht, in 1628.
Wachtel, Marion Kavanaugh
American, 1875-1954
Joseph-Siffred Duplessis
1725-1802 French Joseph Siffred Duplessis Locations French painter. He trained with his father, an amateur painter, and then with Joseph-Gabriel Imbert (1666-1749), a pupil of Charles Le Brun. In 1744 he went to Rome and worked with Pierre Subleyras. He remained there until at least 1747 and possibly until the death of his master in 1749. He must have learnt portrait painting in Rome, but he also painted landscapes, because Joseph Vernet advised him to specialize in this genre.