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 | Grinling Gibbons | Portrait of Charles de Marguetel de Saint-Denis de Saint-Evremond | Margaret Cecil Countess of Ranelagh (mk25 | and his family |
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Alexandre Cabanel
French Academic Painter, 1823-1889 French painter and teacher. His skill in drawing was apparently evident by the age of 11. His father could not afford his training, but in 1839 his departement gave him a grant to go to Paris. This enabled him to register at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts the following October as a pupil of Franeois-Edouard Picot. At his first Salon in 1843 he presented Agony in the Garden (Valenciennes, Mus. B.-A.) and won second place in the Prix de Rome competition (after Leon B?nouville, also a pupil of Picot) in 1845 with Christ at the Praetorium (Paris, Ecole N. Sup. B.-A.). Both Cabanel and Benouville were able to go to Rome, as there was a vacancy from the previous year. Cabanel's Death of Moses (untraced), an academic composition, painted to comply with the regulations of the Ecole de Rome, was exhibited at the Salon of 1852.
Joseph von Fuhrich
(February 9, 1800 - March 13, 1876), Austrian painter, was born at Kratzau in Bohemia. Also known as Josef Ritter von F??hrich. Deeply impressed as a boy by rustic pictures adorning the wayside chapels of his native country, his first attempt at composition was a sketch of the Nativity for the festival of Christmas in his father's house. He lived to see the day when, becoming celebrated as a composer of scriptural episodes, his sacred subjects were transferred in numberless repetitions to the roadside churches of the Austrian state, where humble peasants thus learnt to admire modern art reviving the models of earlier ages. Fehrich has been fairly described as a Nazarene, a romantic religious artist whose pencil did more than any other to restore the old spirit of D??rer and give new shape to countless incidents of the gospel and scriptural legends. Without the power of Cornelius or the grace of Overbeck, he composed with great skill, especially in outline. His mastery of distribution, form, movement and expression was considerable. In its peculiar way his drapery was perfectly cast.
Marinus van Reymerswaele
Flemish Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1490-1567 South Netherlandish painter. He has been identified with Marino di Sirissea and with Marinus de Seeu, painter of Romerswaelen, mentioned respectively by Guicciardini and van Mander. He could quite possibly have been Moryn Claessone, native of Zeeland, who enrolled as a pupil of 'Simon the glassmaker' in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke in 1509. In that case he would have been born c. 1490-95. Claes van Ziericsee, an artist who became master of the Guild in 1475, is assumed to have been his father though this cannot be proved conclusively. Van Reymerswaele's work corresponds closely with Antwerp painting of the beginning of the 16th century