Studio of Sir Godfrey Kneller

ABOUT THE ARTIST: 

Kneller dominated late seventeenth and early eighteenth century British portraiture. With Van Dyck, Lely and Reynolds, his name has become synonymous with the forefront of British historical portraiture – not least because he painted almost every person of importance in British public life. Every reigning British monarch from Charles II to George I sat for Kneller.

Kneller studied in Amsterdam under Ferdinand Bol, one of Rembrandt’s pupils, before going to Italy in 1672. In Italy he began to paint portraits and modified his style. Arriving in England in 1674 he soon established himself as a portrait painter, especially after he painted Charles II, and he succeeded the leading portraitist of the Restoration period, Sir Peter Lely, as principal painter to the king. Kneller was knighted in 1691 and made a baronet in 1715. 

Kneller’s style was broad but his characterisations could be penetrating. Among his best works are 42 portraits of members of the famous political and literary association called the Kit-Cat Club, which are now in the National Portrait Gallery, London. He also executed a series of portraits titled The Hampton Court Beauties and did portraits of British admirals. Studio assistants painted the draperies and other subsidiary elements in many of Kneller’s portraits. 

ABOUT THE SUBJECT: 

Henrietta Knight, Baroness Luxborough (née St Johnborn 15 July 1699, died 26 March 1756), was an English poet and letter writer, now mainly remembered as a gardener. She married the rising politician Robert Knight in 1727, but he banished her to his estate at Barrels Hall in 1736 as punishment for a romantic indiscretion. Horace Wallpole's correspondence suggests she was caught by her husband in flagrante delicto with her doctor, whilst other sources add a further lover in the form of a young cleric named John Dalton (1709–1763).

As Henrietta, Lady Luxborough (from 1745), she was one of the first to establish a ferme ornée and is credited by the OED with at least the first recorded use, if not the invention, of the word "shrubbery". She was a prominent member of the Warwickshire Coterie, a group of poet friends including the gardener and poet William Shenstone, who had developed his own ferme ornée at The Leasowes in Halesowen,  She remained married to her husband , but died before his final elevations in the peerage to a viscouncy and then 1st Earl of Catherlough.

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