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 :. | Isaac Newton | Portrait of the Artist | Portrait of John Vanbrugh | Grinling Gibbons | Portrait of Elizabeth Colyear, Duchess of Dorset (1687-1768); wife of the 1st Duke of Dorset |
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LIPPI, Filippino
Italian Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1457-1504 Son of Filippo Lippi. He was a painter of altarpieces, cassone panels and frescoes and also an exceptional draughtsman. His success lay in his ability to absorb, without slavishly following, the most popular trends in contemporary painting. He worked in Florence and Rome at a time when patrons were beginning to intermingle personal, religious, social and political ideals in their ambitions for palaces and chapels: with the support of wealthy and erudite patrons, such as Lorenzo de' Medici and Filippo Strozzi, he won important civic and private commissions.
Leonardo Bazzaro
(Milan, 1853-1937) was an Italian painter. After picking up the basics in the studio of the painter Gaetano Fasanotti, Bazzaro enrolled at the Brera Academy in Milan, where he was awarded the Fumagalli Prize in 1875. The following years saw a series of perspective views set in Milanese churches and mansions. The success achieved with the public and critics alike at a number of major national and international events prompted him to take an interest also in portraiture and landscape painting, for which his favourite settings were Venice and Chioggia. The works of the 1880s and 1890s also include increasingly intimist scenes of everyday life in the setting of Valsassina, Valle deAosta and Verbano. Bazzaro continued to take part in numerous exhibitions in the region of Lombardy as well as the Venice Biennale and the Rome Quadrenniale right up to his death, always achieving great success with collectors and being asked to execute replicas of his most popular subjects.
Walter Gramatte
Walter Gramatte (8 January 1897 in Berlin - 9 February 1929 in Hamburg) was a German expressionist painter who specialized in magic realism. He often painted with a mystical view of nature. Walter Gramatte died on 9 February 1929 of Intestinal Tuberculosis. His second wife Sonia married again, was then named Sophie Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatte and lived in Canada as a renowned musician. To remember her and her former husband Walter Gramatte „The Eckhardt-Gramatte-Foundatione was established in Winnipeg, Canada. Walter Gramatte's written posthumous works are preserved in the German National Museum. A special exhibition of his paintings, titled Rediscovered: Walter Gramatte 1897-1929, took place in Hamburg Ernst Barlach Haus from October 26, 2008 to February 1, 2009. This exhibition was organized by Kirchner Museum in Davos, Switzerland and the Ernst Barlach Haus in Hamburg, Germany.