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 King William III of England (1650-1702) in State Robes | Charles Montagu | Self portrait | Portrait of Charles Howard | Portrait of Charles Townshend |
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John Peter Russell
(16 June 1858 -22 April 1930) was an Australian impressionist painter. John Peter Russell was born at the Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst, the eldest of four children of John Russell, a Scottish engineer, his wife Charlotte Elizabeth, nee Nicholl, from London. J. P. Russell was a nephew of Sir Peter Nicol Russell. After his father's death J. P. Russell enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College, London, on 5 January 1881 and studied under Alphonse Legros for three years.Russell then went to Paris to study painting under Fernand Cormon. (His fellow students there included Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Émile Bernard.) Russell was a man of means and having married a beautiful Italian, Mariana Antoinetta Matiocco, he settled at Belle Île off the coast of Brittany, where he established an artists' colony. He would have 11 children with Matiocco, of whom six survived. John Peter Russell: Vincent van Gogh, 1886, Van Gogh Museum, AmsterdamRussell had met Vincent van Gogh in Paris and formed a friendship with him. Van Gogh spoke highly of Russell's work, and after his first summer in Arles in 1888 he sent twelve drawings of his paintings to Russell, to inform him about the progress of his work. Claude Monet often worked with Russell at Belle Île and influenced his style, though it has been said that Monet preferred some of Russell's Belle Île seascapes to his own.
William Wendt
1865-1946 Wendt believed there are philosophical, metaphysical, and theological foundations as to why humankind creates Art. Art becomes a sign in itself that points ultimately towards higher realities than the art object or process manifests in and through itself, courtesy of the artist's knowledge and free-will. Art is an adoration symbol that links the reality of the artist's vision and dream-state to the principles that are nature. Wendt decades in front of nature. William Wendt found a California at the close of the 19th century which is now lost forever due to the effects of industrialism, consumerism and population density. Wendt believed nature was a manifestation of God, and he viewed himself as nature's faithful interpreter. Thom Gianetto of Edenhurst Gallery, Los Angeles, is a specialist in William Wendt.
Libri, Girolamo dai
Italian Painter, ca.1474-1555 Illuminator and painter, son of Francesco dai Libri. He was evidently trained by his father, but he received commissions for altarpieces as well as manuscripts. Documents indicate that he lived in Verona all his life, but an early miniature of the Nativity, the only work by him in a series of choir-books almost certainly painted in Ferrara, suggests that he may have spent some time there. Vasari's record that he worked as an illuminator in the monastery of S Salvatore in Candiana (Padua) may be true, as some of Girolamo's surviving miniatures were executed for the abbey. The only record of Girolamo's views on his art occurs in a register of 1544: 'a good and worthy painter must know how to imitate nature well and to feign that which nature makes, and he must be universal in depicting landscapes