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Updated: June 24, 2025
Specially, and in the place of honor, was Sir Peter Lely's picture of the honorable Mistress Isabella Esmond as Diana, in yellow satin, with a bow in her hand and a crescent in her forehead; and dogs frisking about her.
Lely's punishment followed him into his art, for beginning by copying Van Dyck, it is said of Lely that he degenerated in his work till it bore the very 'stamp of the depravity of the age. Lely's sitters were mostly women. Among them was one who deserved a fitter painter, Mistress Anne Killigrew, Dryden's 'Youngest virgin daughter of the skies.
If there was any defect on the wrong side it was, that the eyes were not fine enough; not sufficiently deep and full of meaning. And yet they are not vulgar eyes, in Lely's picture.
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.
In Lely's picture of the young Countess of Chesterfield, her piquancy attracts at a glance, whilst her beauty charms on examination. Her cousin, Anthony Hamilton, describes her as having large blue eyes, very tempting and alluring, a complexion extremely fair, and a heart "ever open to tender sentiments," by reason of which her troubles arose, as shall be set down in proper sequence.
Among them he will find a Mary Queen of Scots, by Cornelius Jansen; a Cromwell, presented by the Protector to Colonel Rich of the parliamentary forces, by whose great-grandson it was bequeathed to the trustees of the museum; William Duke of Cumberland by Morier; Zucchero's Queen Elizabeth; Sir Peter Lely's Charles the Second; and the Queen of George the Second by Jarvis.
The tints of all things have both faded and darkened you taste the chill of the place as you walk from room to room. It was still early in the day and in the season, and I flattered myself that I was the only visitor. This complacency, however, dropped at sight of a person standing motionless before a simpering countess of Sir Peter Lely's creation.
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.
Even Sir Peter Lely's girl in pink and the woodcock shooting with Tom Pitts, and all the other delights that had filled his brain had become things of the past as he thought of Sue's greeting. For the time being this black-eyed little witch with the ringlets about her face had complete possession of him.
Full-length pictures of the members of the Cabal Ministry adorn the dining-room all fine examples of Lely's brush; then there is a very large representation of the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo mounted on his favourite charger "Copenhagen" by Lawrence; two "Romneys," one "Sir Joshua," and several "Knellers."
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