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 :. | John Locke | Portrait of John Vanbrugh | Portrait of Caroline Wilhelmina of Brandenburg-Ansbach | Sir Isaac Newton | Portrait of Charles Seymour |
Related Artists:
Giorgio Vasari
1511-74 Italian painter, architect, and writer. Though he was a prolific painter in the Mannerist style, he is more highly regarded as an architect (he designed the Uffizi Palace, now the Uffizi Gallery), but even his architecture is overshadowed by his writings. His Lives of the Most Eminent Architects, Painters, and Sculptors (1550) offers biographies of early to late Renaissance artists. His style is eminently readable and his material is well researched, though when facts were scarce he did not hesitate to fill in the gaps. In his view, Giotto had revived the art of true representation after its decline in the early Middle Ages, and succeeding artists had brought that art progressively closer to the perfection achieved by Michelangelo.
Camillo Procaccini
(1551 - August 21, 1629) was an Italian painter. He has been posthumously referred to as the Vasari of Lombardy, for his prolific Mannerist fresco decoration. Born in Bologna, he was the son of the painter Ercole Procaccini the Elder, and older brother to Giulio Cesare and Carlo Antonio, both painters. In 1587 he distinguished in the fresco decoration of the Basilica della Ghiara in Reggio Emilia. In the late 1580s he moved to Milan, where count Camillo Visconti Borromeo commissioned him the decoration of his villa in Lainate. The organ shutters for the Cathedral of Milan were painted after 1590 by Camillo, Giuseppe Meda (died 1599), and Ambrogio Figino. His other works of note include the frescoes of the nave and the apse of the Cathedral of Piacenza in collaboration with Ludovico Carracci (1605 - 1609), and the vault and choir in Santi Paolo e Barnaba of Milan. Also famous is a Nativity in the Sacro Monte d'Orta. Among his pupils is Carlo Biffi. Among his many other works are a Martyrdom of St. Agnes painted in fresco in the sacristy of Milan cathedral; a Madonna and Child painted for the church of Santa Maria del Carmine; an 'Adoration of the Shepherds found in the Brera; and the ceiling of the church of Padri Zoccolanti, representing the Assumption of the Virgin. eall in the same city. He also painted a Last Judgment for the church of San Prospero at Reggio; He painted a St. Roch administering the Sacrament to the Plague-stricken.
Pierre-Adolphe Badin
painted Portrait of Charles Coiffier, in 1837