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 Joseph Addison | Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington (1694-1753) and his sister Lady Jane Boyle | Margaret Cecil Countess of Ranelagh (mk25 | Portrait of William Legge | Portrait of Charles de Marguetel de Saint-Denis de Saint-Evremond |
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Lorens Pasch the Younger
(1733-1805) was a Swedish painter He grew up in an artistic family (he was the brother of Ulrika Pasch, alongside whom he was elected to the Art Academy in 1773), but his father Lorens Pasch the Elder wanted him to become a priest. He was thus sent to study in Uppsala aged 10. However, he decided on an artistic career after all and began an apprenticeship in his father's studio before going to Copenhagen, with introductions from his wealthy and influential uncle Johan Pasch. There he studied painting for three years in the studio of Carl Gustaf Pilo. Despite good offers of studio-apprenticeships and commissions from Sweden, he then set off for Paris in 1758 to complete his artistic education. There he specialised in history painting in the studios of Eustache Le Sueur and François Boucher (though for financial reasons he also continued his training in portraiture) and became friends with fellow-Swede Alexander Roslin. In 1764 he left Paris and got back to Sweden in 1766. He fully completed his training in the studio of the French painter Guillaume Taraval, who in 1735 founded the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm. Soon after his arrival back in Sweden Pasch's gained a great reputation as a portraitist, gaining favour and commissions from the royal court and gaining the esteem of Adolf Frederick, King of Sweden and his queen Louisa Ulrika - one of his most notable works is his Portrait of Louisa Ulrika of Prussia. He served as a professor at the Academy of Arts from 1773 to his death, becoming its director on Pilo's death in 1793. At the end of his life he concentrated more on training young artists and managing the Academy than on painting. He died unmarried in 1805 and due to his powerful portraits remains one of the most respected painters of the Gustavian era in Sweden.
Lower Rhenish School
early fifteenth century
franz von schober
was a student in Vienna, where he met F. Schubert, E. Bauernfeld, and M. von Schwind. He is the author of twelve poems set to music by Schubert between 1815 and 1827, of which the best known is An die Musik (Du holde Kunst). In later life Schober was a secretary of legation (Legationsrat) in Weimar.