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 Charles Seymour | Portrait of Charles Townshend | Portrait of Arnold Joost van Keppel | and his family | Portrait of Sir Jonathan Trelawny |
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Lemuel Francis Abbott
1760-1803 Lemuel Francis Abbott Locations English painter. He was the son of a clergyman and went to London to study with Francis Hayman shortly before the latter death in 1776; he may have completed his studies in Derby with Joseph Wright of Derby. By the early 1780s Abbott had established a busy portrait practice in London. The formula he adopted for most of his head-and-shoulder portraits can be seen in Sir William Herschel (1785; London, N. Mar. Mus.): the body is parallel to the picture plane, and the sitter head is moved into three-quarter profile, as if his attention has been suddenly distracted. In later portraits, such as those of fellow artists Francesco Bartolozzi (c. 1792; London, Tate) or Joseph Nollekens (c. 1797; London, N.P.G.), the sitter hand or some attribute balances the movement of the head. Only male portraits by Abbott are known, and his patrons were mostly drawn from the professional classes, particularly the Navy; there are several versions of Lord Nelson (e.g. 1798; London, N. Mar. Mus.). His style is crisp but scratchy in technique, and often the anatomy of his figures is inaccurate. Paint is handled in a manner comparable with that of Gainsborough Dupont, but Abbott sense of composition is superior. In 1798 he was certified insane, but he continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy in London for two further years. Several of his works were probably finished by another hand.
Landseer, Edwin Henry
RA (7 March 1802 - 1 October 1873) was an English painter, well known for his paintings of animalseparticularly horses, dogs and stags. The best known of Landseer's works, however, are sculptures: the lions in Trafalgar Square, London.
alexis de tocqueville
was born in Paris on July 29, 1805, of an aristocratic Norman family. He studied law in Paris (1823-1826) and then was appointed an assistant magistrate at Versailles (1827).