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 | Self Portrait | Queen Anne | Self-portrait | Portrait of Caroline Wilhelmina of Brandenburg-Ansbach |
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Agostino Carracci
(16 August 1557 ?C 22 March 1602) was an Italian painter and printmaker. He was the brother of the more famous Annibale and cousin of Lodovico Carracci. He posited the ideal in nature, and was the founder of the competing school to the more gritty (for lack of a better term) view of nature as expressed by Caravaggio. He was one of the founders of the Accademia degli Incamminati along with his brother, Annibale Carracci, and cousin, Ludovico Carracci. The academy helped propel painters of the School of Bologna to prominence. Agostino Carracci was born in Bologna, and trained at the workshop of the architect Domenico Tibaldi. Starting from 1574 he worked as a reproductive engraver, copying works of 16th century masters such as Federico Barocci, Tintoretto, Antonio Campi, Veronese and Correggio. He also produced some original prints, including two etchings. He travelled to Venice (1582, 1587?C1589) and Parma (1586?C1587). Together with Annibale and Ludovico he worked in Bologna on the fresco cycles in Palazzo Fava (Histories of Jason and Medea, 1584) and Palazzo Magnani (Histories of Romulus, 1590?C1592). In 1592 he also painted the Communion of St. Jerome, now in the Pinacoteca di Bologna and considered his masterwork. From 1586 is his altarpiece of the Madonna with Child and Saints, in the National Gallery of Parma. In 1598 Carracci joined his brother Annibale in Rome, to collaborate on the decoration of the Gallery in Palazzo Farnese. From 1598?C1600 is a triple Portrait, now in Naples, an example of genre painting. In 1600 he was called to Parma by Duke Ranuccio I Farnese to began the decoration of the Palazzo del Giardino, but he died before it was finished. Agostino's son Antonio Carracci was also a painter, and attempted to compete with his father's Academy.
Pollard, James
English, 1792-1867 Painter and etcher, son of Robert Pollard. His early career was spent in the shadow of his father, for whom he worked as an etcher of miscellaneous sporting subjects before establishing himself c. 1820 as a sporting painter in his own right. A typical example is Doncaster Races: Horses Starting for the St Leger (1831; Paul Mellon priv. col.). Following a commission from the King's Printseller, Edward Orme, for an inn signboard showing a coach and horses, Pollard began to specialize in coaching scenes.
Joachim Wtewael
1566-1638 Flemish Joachim Wtewael Galleries Dutch painter and draughtsman. He was one of the last exponents of MANNERISM. From c. 1590 until 1628, the year of his latest known dated paintings, he employed such typical Mannerist formal devices as brilliant decorative colour, contrived spatial design and contorted poses. He sometimes combined such artifice with naturalism, and this amalgam represents the two approaches Dutch 16th- and 17th-century theorists discussed as uyt den geest (from the imagination) and naer t leven (after life). Wtewaels activity reflects the transition from Mannerism to a more naturalistic style in Dutch art. Slightly over 100 of his paintings and about 80 drawings are known. Subjects from the Bible and mythology predominate; he also painted several portraits, including a Self-portrait (1601; Utrecht, Cent. Mus.).