Kneller (Sir Godfrey).
SIR GODFREY KNELLER was born at Lubeck about 1648. He was intended for the army; but his genius for painting being discovered, he was placed under Bol, at Amsterdam, after which he received instructions from Rembrandt. In 1672 he went to Italy; and while at Venice, painted the portraits of some families of distinction. From thence he came to England by the way of Hamburgh, and was employed to paint a portrait of Charles II., at the same time with Lely, who candidly bestowed praise upon his performance. This success fixed Kneller at the English court, where he painted seven sovereigns; besides three foreign ones. His principal patron was William III., who conferred on him the honour of knighthood, and engaged him to paint the Hampton Court beauties. His pencil was also employed on several of the pictures of the admirals in that palace, and the Kit-Cat Club. George I. created him a baronet. He was a man of wit, but excessively vain, as appeared in his gift of five hundred pounds to Pope, to write an extravagant epitaph for his monument in Westminster Abbey. He died very rich in 1723.—Walpole’s Anecdotes.
ROYAL PATRONAGE.
The ten sovereigns whom Kneller painted were the following: Charles II., James II., and his queen, William and Mary, Anne, George I., Louis XIV., the Czar Peter the Great, and the Emperor Charles VI.
DR. RADCLIFFE.
Sir Godfrey, when living next door to the famous Dr. Radcliffe, granted him permission to make a door into the painter’s garden, where there was a beautiful variety of flowers. But the physician’s servants taking unbecoming liberties on Kneller’s premises, he had to complain to their master. After many fruitless remonstrances Sir Godfrey sent his man one day to let the physician know that he should be obliged to brick up the passage; to which the cynic replied, with his accustomed asperity, “Let him do what he will with the door, except painting it.” The servant was at first unwilling to communicate the exact answer, but Kneller insisted on knowing it, and retorted, “Did my good friend say so? Then you go back and tell him that I will take anything from him but his physic.”
ORIGIN OF THE KIT-CAT CLUB.
This club is said to have been founded by Jacob Tonson, the bookseller. However this may have been, he was certainly their secretary. He was an active man at all their meetings, and as a testimony of the good disposition of his illustrious friends towards him, they each presented him with their portraits. These were painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller. The club is reported to have derived its title from the name of the person at whose house the meetings were first held. This was one Christopher Cat, an obscure pastry-cook, who lived originally in Shire Lane, Temple Bar, but subsequently at the Fountain Tavern, Strand. The standing dish at supper was mutton pies: for the manufacture of which Mr. Cat had acquired considerable reputation. A different etymology of the club’s name has been assigned by Arbuthnot. In the following epigram, he seems to refer it to the custom of toasting ladies after dinner, peculiar to those gentlemen:—
“Whence deathless Kit-Cat took its name,
Few critics can unriddle;
Some say from pastry-cook it came,
And some from cat and fiddle.
From no trim beaux its name it boasts,
Grey statesman or green wits;
But from its pell-mell pack of toasts,
Of old cats and young kits.”
—Gentleman’s Magazine.
PORTRAIT PAINTING.
Sir Godfrey, who was principally eminent as a portrait-painter, after a long discourse upon the various schools of painting, concluded with, “Painters of history make the dead live, and do not themselves live till they be dead; I paint the living, and they make me live.”
CUT AT POPE.
The artist’s consciousness of his own skill was so well known that it exposed him frequently to the banter and irony of the wits, his friends. Pope, to pay him off, said to him after looking round a room full of beauties he had painted, “It’s a pity, Sir Godfrey, that you had not been consulted at the creation.” The artist threw his eyes strong upon Pope’s shoulders, and answered, “I should have made some better things.”
A COUNTRY SITTER.
A certain country family, whose reason for coming to town was the intention of having their pictures drawn, and principally that of the hopeful heir, brought him to the artist. Seeing that a little converse with the world would soon wear off his awkward rusticity, instead of drawing him in a green coat with spaniels, or in the more contemptible livery of a fop playing with a lapdog, the painter gave him a soul darting with proper spirit through the rusticity of his features. A gentleman met the mother and sisters coming down stairs the day it was finished, and found Sir Godfrey in a violent rage above: “Look there,” said he, pointing to a picture, “there is a fellow! I have put some sense into him, and none of his family know him.”
VANDYKE AND KNELLER.
There was a period, observed Sir Joshua Reynolds, when to name Vandyke in competition with Kneller was to incur human contempt. The character of the eighteenth century in England resembled that of the seventeenth in Italy. It was the age of English mediocrity, the reaction of that powerful burst of national genius that was developed by the civil wars and the revolution.
TONSON, THE BOOKSELLER.
Kneller was very covetous, very vain, and a great glutton. Tonson, the bookseller, got many pictures from him, it is related, by playing these passions against the other. He would tell the great painter that he was the greatest master that ever was, and send him every now and then a haunch of venison and a dozen of claret. “Oh!” said Kneller once to Vandergucht, “this old Jacob loves me; he is a very good man: you see he loves me, for he sends me good things, the venison was fat!” Kneller would say to Cock, the auctioneer, “I love you, Mr. Cock, and I will do you good; but you must do something for me too, Mr. Cock; one hand can wash the face, but two hands wash one another.”