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He is said to have studied under Rembrandt; but if this be true, it must have been in Kneller's early youth. It is more certain that he travelled in Italy and returned to settle in Hamburg, but changing his plans, he came to England, when he was about thirty years of age, in 1675. London became his home.
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!"
The southern range of rooms formed the King's suite, and passing from the Guard Room, we go successively through: the First Presence Chamber, in which are to be seen Sir Godfrey Kneller's "Beauties" of the Orange Court; the Second Presence Chamber, the most memorable thing in which is Van Dyck's fine equestrian portrait of Charles the First; the Audience Chamber with a portrait of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, over the fireplace; the King's Drawing Room; King William's Bedroom, with an ornate ceiling painted by Sir William Thornhill, and the great canopied bed with time-worn crimson silk hangings; the King's Dressing Room, in which are several Holbeins including two portraits of Henry the Eighth; and the last of King William's rooms, the Writing Closet, in which are to be seen Zucchero's portrait of Queen Elizabeth in fancy dress, also a smaller one of her, and a remarkable full length of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, in scarlet costume.
I contented myself with telling her she was very ill advised, and thus we parted. But two days ago, when Sir Geoffrey Kneller's pictures were to be sold, she went to my sister Gower, and very civily asked if she intended to bid for your picture; assuring her that, if she did, she would not offer at purchasing it.
Two or three years later Sir William married the Bishop's daughter. Life of Sir W Jones, pp.240, 279. No. 2. See vol. i p. 378. Northcote, according to Hazlitt, said of this character with some truth, that 'it was like one of Kneller's portraits it would do for anybody. Northcote's Conversations, p.86. See post, p.98. London Chronicle, May 2, 1769.
Only I could not quite believe that this little wrinkled old man was the same who looked so proudly from Kneller's canvas. But when the service ended and he stopped to exchange a word with father, I saw the face was indeed the same, though now writ over sadly by the hand of time weighted down with sorrow.
When he and Lely painted Charles II, together, Kneller's application and rapidity of execution were so far before those of Lely, who was technically the better painter of the two, that Kneller's picture was finished when Lely's was dead-coloured only. Kneller was highly praised by Dryden, Addison, Prior, and Steele.
Sir James, not altogether daunted by his ill success, determined to do what he could on his own responsibility, and without aid from the Treasury. It is to be feared that Sir James's generosity was somewhat abused. Certain it is that dissensions arose in his Academy as in Kneller's; that one Vandrebank headed an opposition party, and at length withdrew with his adherents to found a rival school.
"A speaking likeness," he went on, glancing from it to the original and back again. "I ever thought it one of Kneller's best. The portrait of a gentleman. Only you have noticed, I dare say, how in the firelight familiar objects change aspect many times? only just now it seemed to me that it lost that distinction" "Well?" said Haward, as he paused.
It is, methinks, a low and degrading Idea of that Sex, which was created to refine the Joys, and soften the Cares of Humanity, by the most agreeable Participation, to consider them meerly as Objects of Sight. This is abridging them of their natural Extent of Power, to put them upon a Level with their Pictures at Kneller's.
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