Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Wikipedia
Sir Peter Lely (14 September 1618 - 30 November 1680) was a painter of Dutch origin. He was the most popular portrait artist in England from soon after he arrived in the country in the 1640s to his death. He also owned a major collection of art, especially drawings by other artists.
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 become 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. 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 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, but his talent ensured that his career was uninterrupted 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...."
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 British subject in 1662.
![Two ladies from the Lake family, 1650. Held by the Tate Gallery.[1]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sir_Peter_Lely_002.jpg)
Demand was high, and Lely and his school 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." 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. 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. He was buried at St Paul's Church, Covent Garden. He collected Old Masters during his life, with examples by Veronese, Titian, Claude Lorrain and Rubens, and a fabulous collection of drawings. His collection was broken up and sold after his death, raising the immense sum of £26,000. 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.
[edit] References
- ^ Ellis Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, 1530-1790, 1953, Penguin Books (now Yale History of Art series)
- Millar, Oliver 'Lely, Sir Peter' (inc. bibliography) Grove Dictionary of Art, [London: 1996 rpr. 2002] vol. 19, pp. 119-125
- Millar, Oliver 'Sir Peter Lely 1618-80' [London]: National Portrait Gallery, 1978.
- Waterhouse, Ellis. Painting in Britain 1530 to 1790. Fourth Edition, New York, Viking Penguin, 1978.
- Whinney, Margaret and Millar, Oliver English Art 1625 - 1714 Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
[edit] External links
- Self-portrait from the National Portrait Gallery
- Biography from the Getty Museum
- Biography from the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
- Biography from the Web Gallery of Art
1893 text
Peter Lely, afterwards knighted. He lived in the Piazza, Covent Garden. This portrait was bought by Lord Braybrooke at Mr. Pepys Cockerell’s sale in 1848, and is now at Audley End.
Annotations
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http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/bio/a222-1.htm
ist painting
Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich
by Sir Peter Lely
oil on canvas,circa 1655-1659
On display at the National Portrait Gallery
peter lely
Born 1618, Died 1680
Painter, Draftsman
BritishHis real name was van der Faes, but Peter Lely took his nickname after a family home with a lily on its gable. Born in Germany to Dutch parents, by 1637 he was Pieter Lely at the Guild of Saint Luke in Haarlem, where he trained. Ten years later he was in London, where he painted landscape, religious, and history pictures but quickly recognized the strength of the market in portraiture. Working for many of the late Anthony van Dyck’s patrons, Lely took the opportunity to study his predecessor’s paintings carefully.
http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/m0004463.html
alt bio:
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A bit about his place in British art history:
“Portraiture, which was to become the single most brilliant achievement of English painting in the 18th century, was a field dominated in the 17th century by foreign artists who received many commissions from the royal court. The leading exponents of this period were van Dyck and Lely.”
Quoted from this page, which pictures one of his portraits:
http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/l/lely/henriett.html(This link thanks to Nix’s annotation for 22 Nov 1660)
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Peter Lely did take his oaths today for his Naturalization
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=26438
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from L&M Companion
…by 1650 he was living in a house in the Piazza, Convent Garden, possibly the one in which he died. In the hearth-tax returns of 1666 a Mr Lilly is shown as occupying premises on the n. side of Long Acres, which contained a number of painters’ studios (those e.g. of Hayls, Gibson and Streeter). The best-known of his works in the diary period are the series of court beauties (now at Hampton Court) and of the admirals who fought the Battle of Lowestoft (now in the National Maritime Museum). Pepys was himself painted by Lely, or in his studio, in 1673, probably on his appointment to the Admiralty. This picture now hangs in the Hall of Magdalene College. Pepys possessed at least two other protraits by him—those of Sandwich and Morland—and preserved in his library a number of engravings of Lely’s portraits. -
Summarized from Grammont
Lely was the principal painter of Charles II’s reign and was born at Soest in Holland, and studied under Grebber at Haerlem. His real name was Van der Faes, his father being a captain in the infantry. He came to England in 1643 and was well received at the court. He became well known in Charles’ court for the collection of “beauties” at Hampton Court.
In comparing Lely’s painting with Vandyke’s, Walpole contrasts the formal drapery of the latter with the fantastic night-gown raiments of the former. ‘Whether the age was improved by beauty or in flattery, Lely’s women are certainly mre handsomer than those of Vandyke. They please as much more as they evidently meaned to please.” The commentary goes on to note the “sameness” of all of the women that Lely painted in their sleepy eyes and some facial expressions.