Sir Godfrey Kneller Bt
Self-portrait of Kneller, 1685
Born	Gottfried Kniller (1646-08-08)8 August 1646 Lübeck, Holy Roman Empire
Died	19 October 1723(1723-10-19) (aged 77) London, England
Occupation	Painter
Known for	Leading portrait painter of England
Spouse	Susanna Grave
Relatives	Johann Zacharias Kneller (brother) Andreas Kneller (brother)

Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1st Baronet (born Gottfried Kniller; 8 August 1646 – 19 October 1723) was a German-born British painter. The leading portraitist in England during the late Stuart and early Georgian eras, he served as court painter to successive English and British monarchs, including Charles II of England and George I of Great Britain. Kneller also painted scientists such as Isaac Newton, foreign monarchs such as Louis XIV of France and visitors to England such as Michael Shen Fu-Tsung. A pioneer of the kit-cat portrait, he was also commissioned by William III of England to paint eight "Hampton Court Beauties" to match a similar series of paintings of Charles II's "Windsor Beauties" that had been painted by Kneller's predecessor as court painter, Peter Lely.

Kneller was born Gottfried Kniller in the Free City of Lübeck, the son of Zacharias Kniller, a portrait painter.^[1] Kneller studied in Leiden, but became a pupil of Ferdinand Bol and Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn in Amsterdam. He then travelled with his brother John Zacharias Kneller, who was an ornamental painter, to Rome and Venice in the early 1670s, painting historical subjects and portraits in the studio of Carlo Maratti, and later moved to Hamburg.

The brothers came to England in 1676,^[2] and won the patronage of the Duke of Monmouth. He was introduced to, and painted a portrait of, Charles II.

In England, Kneller concentrated almost entirely on portraiture. In the spirit of enterprise, 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 jointly appointed Principal Painter in Ordinary with John Riley to the Crown by Charles II.^[3][4][5]

For about 20 years (c. 1682–1702) he lived at No. 16-17 The Great Piazza, Covent Garden.^[6] Kneller's studio manager was Edward Byng.

In the 1690s, Kneller painted the Hampton Court Beauties depicting the most glamorous ladies-in-waiting of the Royal Court for which he received, in 1692, his knighthood from William III. In 1695, he received, in the presence of the king, an honorary Doctorate of Law from the University of Oxford. In 1700, he was created a Knight of the Holy Roman Empire by Emperor Leopold I.^[7] He produced a series of "Kit-cat" portraits of 48 leading politicians and men of letters, members of the Kit-Cat Club.^[1]

Created a baronet by King George I on 24 May 1715,^[1] he was also head of the Kneller Academy of Painting and Drawing from 1711 until 1716 in Great Queen Street, London, which counted such artists as Thomas Gibson amongst its founding directors. His paintings were praised by Whig members including John Dryden, Joseph Addison,^[8] Richard Steele, and Alexander Pope.

On the landing in Horsham Museum in West Sussex hang works of art from the museum's extensive painting collection, featuring a large 18th-century portrait of Charles Eversfield and his wife, of Denne Park House.^[9]

He married a widow, Susanna Grave, on 23 January 1704 at St Bride's Church, London.^[1] She was the daughter of the Reverend John Cawley, Archdeacon of Lincoln and Rector of Henley-on-Thames, and the granddaughter of regicide William Cawley.^[1] The couple had no children.

Kneller died of fever in 1723 at Great Queen Street and his remains were interred at Twickenham. He had been a churchwarden at St Mary's, Twickenham, when the 14th-century nave collapsed in 1713 and was active in the plans for the church's reconstruction by John James.^[10] His widow was buried at Twickenham on 11 December 1729.^[1]

A memorial was erected in Westminster Abbey.^[1] Kneller's will gave a pension of £100 a year to his assistant Edward Byng and entrusted Byng with seeing that all unfinished work was completed. Byng also inherited the drawings in Kneller's studio.^[11] Kneller and his wife had no children together.^[1] Most of his fortune was inherited by his grandson, Godfrey Kneller Huckle, who was the son of Agnes Huckle,^[1] Kneller's illegitimate daughter by Mrs Voss,^[12] and who took his grandfather's surname (Kneller)^[13] as a condition of his inheritance.

The site of the house Kneller built in 1709 in Whitton, near Twickenham, became occupied by the mid-19th century Kneller Hall, home of the Royal Military School of Music.^[1]

As to thinking better or worse of mankind from experience, some cunning people will not be satisfied unless they have put men to the test, as they think. There is a very good story told of Sir Godfrey Kneller, in his character of a Justice of the peace. A gentleman brought his servant before him, upon an accusation of having stolen some money from him; but it having come out that he had laid it purposely in the servant's way, in order to try his honesty, Sir Godfrey sent the master to prison.

— James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson^[14]

In his hometown Lübeck there are works to be seen in the St. Annen Museum and in Saint Catherine Church. His former works at St. Mary's Church were destroyed by the Bombing of Lübeck 1942. A large oil portrait (84" x 55") of James VII of Scotland (King James II of England) hangs on the main staircase of private members' Club, The Caledonian Club, in Belgravia, London.

A portrait of Queen Anne that belongs to Trinity Hospital in Retford, Nottinghamshire has been attributed to Kneller by the auctioneers Phillips – though it is unsigned. The hospital has a strong connection with Queen Anne, the founder being a first cousin of her grandmother. The portrait was restored and cleaned in 1999.

• 
  Pyotr Potemkin, 1682
• 
  Princess Anne, 1683
• 
  Portrait of James II of England, 1684
• 
  William III, 1690
• 
  Earl of Marlborough, c. 1690
• 
  Peter the Great, 1698
• 
  Duke of Shrewsbury, c.1700
• 
  Earl of Albermarle, 1700
• 
  Admiral Benbow, 1701
• 
  Earl of Albemarle, 1701
• 
  Countess of Albermarle, c.1701
• 
  Duchess of Marlborough, c.1702
• 
  Earl of Godolphin, c.1706
• 
  Stafford Fairborne, c.1708
• 
  Countess of Sunderland, c.1710
• 
  James Stanhope, c.1710
• 
  Earl of Orford, c.1710
• 
  Arthur Maynwaring, 1710
• 
  Portrait of Spencer Compton, c.1710
• 
  Portrait of Sir Christopher Wren, 1711.
• 
  Duke of Devonshire, c.1711
• 
  Earl of Peterborough, 1715
• 
  Earl of Scarbrough, 1717

• English school of painting
• Kneller Hall

Notes

Sources

• (in Dutch) Godfried & Johan Zacharias Kneller biography in De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen (1718) by Arnold Houbraken, courtesy of the Digital library for Dutch literature

Principal Studies

Adapted from a following source: Freitag, Wolfgang M. (1997) [1985]. Art Books: A Basic Bibliography of Monographs on Artists (2nd ed.). New York, London: Garland. p. 203, entries nos. 6184–6186. ISBN 0-8240-3326-4. LCCN 96028425.

• Ackermann, Wilhelm A. (1845). Der Portraitmaler Sir Godfrey Kniller, im Verhältniss zur Kunstbildung seiner Zeit (in German). Lübeck: Borschers. OCLC 84564667 – via Google Books.
• Collins Baker, C. H. (1922). Lely and Kneller. British Artists. Vol. 5. New York: F. A. Stokes. LCCN 23007185. OCLC 671555512 – via the Internet Archive.
• Killanin, Michael Morris, Baron (1948). Sir Godfrey Kneller and His Times, 1646–1723. London: Batsford. LCCN 48009603. OCLC 1263366 – via Google Books.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Stewart, John Douglas (1971). Sir Godfrey Kneller (exhibition catalogue). London, Bell: National Portrait Gallery. ISBN 0-7135-1682-8. LCCN 72175245. OCLC 928238240.
• Stewart, John Douglas (1983). Sir Godfrey Kneller and the English Baroque Portrait. Oxford Studies in the History of Art and Architecture. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-817356-3. LCCN 82014249. OCLC 461761506 – via the Internet Archive.

Reference books

• Bénézit, Emmanuel (2006) [first published in French in 1911–1923]. Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Vol. 7. Paris: Gründ. pp. 1356–1358. ISBN 2-7000-3077-X – via the Internet Archive.
• Cast, David (1996). "Kneller, Sir Godfrey [Kniller, Gottfried]". In Turner, Jane (ed.). The Dictionary of Art. Vol. 18. New York: Grove's Dictionaries. pp. 144–147. ISBN 1-884446-00-0. LCCN 96013628. OCLC 1033666240 – via the Internet Archive.
• Collins Baker, C. H. (1927). "Kniller (Kneller), Gottfried (Godfrey)". In Vollmer, Hans (ed.). Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler (in German). Vol. 20. Leipzig: E. A. Seemann. pp. 596–600. OCLC 873748586 – via the Internet Archive.
• Stewart, John Douglas (2004). "Kneller, Sir Godfrey [formerly Gottfried Kneller], baronet". In Matthew, H. C. G. & Harrison, Brian (eds.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 31. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 877–885. ISBN 0-19-861381-4. LCCN 2004005444. OCLC 1035757202 – via the Internet Archive.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Godfrey Kneller.

• Media related to Godfrey Kneller at Wikimedia Commons
• 839 artworks by or after Godfrey Kneller at the Art UK site

Wikisource has the text of the 1885–1900 Dictionary of National Biography's article about Kneller, Godfrey.

Wikisource has the text of a 1920 Encyclopedia Americana article about Godfrey Kneller.

• Rossetti, William Michael (1911). "Kneller, Sir Godfrey" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 15 (11th ed.). p. 850.
• A portrait of John Benbow Esq. Admiral of the Fleet.engraved by William Henry Mote for Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1838 with a poetical illustration by Letitia Elizabeth Landon.
• King Charles II (1685) at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
• Artcyclopedia: Sir Godfrey Kneller
• Biography
• Godfrey Kneller at PubHist
• Portraits by Kneller Archived 12 September 2008 at the Wayback Machine at the National Portrait Gallery
• Self-portrait Archived 30 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine at the National Portrait Gallery
• Horsham Museum