Peter Lely

Sir Peter Lely

Born Pieter van der Faes
(1618-09-14)14 September 1618
Soest, Westphalia
Died 30 November 1680(1680-11-30) (aged 62)
Covent Garden, England
Nationality Dutch - English
Known for Painting

Sir Peter Lely (14 September 1618 – 30 November 1680) was a painter of Dutch origin, whose career was nearly all spent in England, where he became the dominant portrait painter to the court.

Life

Nymphs by a Fountain, an atypical mythological work

Lely was born Pieter van der Faes to Dutch parents in Soest in Westphalia,[1] where his father was an officer serving in the armed forces of the Elector of Brandenburg. Lely studied painting in Haarlem, where he may have been apprenticed to Pieter de Grebber. He became a master of the Guild of Saint Luke in Haarlem in 1637. He is reputed to have adopted the surname "Lely" (also occasionally spelled Lilly) from a heraldic lily on the gable of the house where his father was born in The Hague.

He arrived in London in around 1641, which was marked by the death of Anthony van Dyck in December. His early English paintings, mainly mythological or religious scenes, or portraits set in a pastoral landscape, show influences from Anthony van Dyck and the Dutch baroque. Lely's portraits were well received, and he succeeded Anthony van Dyck as the most fashionable portrait artist in England. He became a freeman of the Painter-Stainers' Company in 1647 and was portrait artist to Charles I. His talent ensured that his career was not interrupted by Charles's execution, and he served Oliver Cromwell, whom he painted "warts and all", and Richard Cromwell. In the years around 1650 the poet Sir Richard Lovelace wrote two poems about Lely – Peinture and "See what a clouded majesty ..."

Peter Lely - Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich

After the English Restoration in 1660, Lely was appointed as Charles II's Principal Painter in Ordinary in 1661, with a stipend of £200 per year, as Van Dyck had enjoyed in the previous Stuart reign. Lely became a naturalised English subject in 1662. The young Robert Hooke came to London to follow an apprenticeship with Lely before being given a place at Westminster School by Richard Busby.

Demand was high, and Lely and his large workshop were prolific. After Lely painted a sitter's head, Lely's pupils would often complete the portrait in one of a series of numbered poses. As a result, Lely is the first English painter who has left "an enormous mass of work", although the quality of studio pieces is variable. As Brian Sewell put it:

There may well be thousands of these portraits, ranging from rare prime originals of often quite astonishing quality, to crass workshop replicas by assistants drilled to imitate Lely’s way with the fashionable face and repeat the stock patterns of the dress, landscapes, flowers, musical instruments and other essential embellishments of portraiture. On Lely’s death in 1680 his executors employed a dozen such slaves to complete for sale the many unfinished canvases stacked about his studio. It is these half-and-half and hardly-at-all Lelys that line the corridors of the indigent aristocracy whose houses are now administered by the National Trust, and no sight is more aesthetically and intellectually numbing, unless it is a corridor of Knellers.[2]

Among his most famous paintings are a series of 10 portraits of ladies from the Royal court, known as the "Windsor Beauties", formerly at Windsor Castle but now at Hampton Court Palace; a similar series for Althorp; a series of 12 of the admirals and captains who fought in the Second Anglo-Dutch War, known as the "Flagmen of Lowestoft", now mostly owned by the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich; and his Susannah and the Elders at Burghley House.

James VII and II, Duke of York, 1661

His most famous non-portrait work is probably Nymphs by a fountain in Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Lely played a significant role in introducing the mezzotint to Britain, as he realized its possibilities for publicising his portraits. He encouraged Dutch mezzotinters to come to Britain to copy his work, laying the foundations for the English mezzotint tradition.

Lely was knighted in 1680. He died soon afterwards at his easel in Covent Garden, while painting a portrait of the Duchess of Somerset, and was buried at St Paul's Church, Covent Garden.

Legacy

His collection of Old Masters, including Veronese, Titian, Claude Lorrain and Rubens, and a fabulous collection of drawings, was broken up and sold after his death, raising the immense sum of £26,000.[3] Some items in it which had been acquired by Lely from the Commonwealth dispersal of Charles I's art collections, such as the Lely Venus, were re-acquired by the Royal Collection.

He was replaced as court portraitist by Sir Godfrey Kneller, also a German-born Dutchman, whose style drew from Lely's but reflecting later Continental trends. Between them they established the basic English portrait style followed by less fashionable painters for decades.

Amongst Lely's pupils were John Greenhill and Willem Wissing.

A horse was also named after him, finishing fourth in the 1996 Grand National.

Gallery

Notes

  1. ↑ Ellis Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, 1530-1790, 1953, Penguin Books (now Yale History of Art series)
  2. ↑ Art History News, quoting his Evening Standard review of the 2012 Lely exhibition "Small but perfectly formed"
  3. ↑ Cust 1893.

References

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External links

Court offices
Preceded by
Anthony van Dyck		 Principal Painter in Ordinary to the King
1661-1680 		Succeeded by
Godfrey Kneller
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