United States or Eswatini ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And here is Kneller's familiar portrait of John Evelyn, the other diarist of the times. And Lely's portrait of Rochester, the roue, represented in the characteristic act of crowning his monkey with laurel, laurel to which he sometimes aspired himself.
Thus it does no harm to the general impression, when you come to be sensible that many of the monuments are ridiculous, and commemorate a mob of people who are mostly forgotten in their graves, and few of whom ever deserved any better boon from posterity. You acknowledge the force of Sir Godfrey Kneller's objection to being buried in Westminster Abbey, because "they do bury fools there!"
All Sir Peter Lely's lewd women, and Kneller's too, were in these rooms; and the jolly old stupidity of George III. and his family, many times repeated; and pictures by Titian, Rubens, and other famous hands, intermixed with many by West, which provokingly drew the eye away from their betters.
One pathetic entry in the countess's diary speaks eloquently of their nuptial tenderness and devotion: "April 7th, 1716. After dinner we went to Sir Godfrey Kneller's to see a picture of my lord, which he is drawing, and is the best that was ever done for him; it is for my drawing-room, and in the same posture that he watched me so many weeks in my great illness."
All Sir Peter Lely's lewd women, and Kneller's too, were in these rooms; and the jolly old stupidity of George III. and his family, many times repeated; and pictures by Titian, Rubens, and other famous hands, intermixed with many by West, which provokingly drew the eye away from their betters.
And Kneller's portrait of Lord William Russell, with a face that answers better to the character of the man, as it appeared before he was brought face to face with death, and forced to exert and to display the manlier qualities of his nature. The men of letters of the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century appear here in great force.
Word Of The Day