C.1675 Portrait of a Lady in a Blue Gown Holding a Sheer Scarf; Studio of Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723), Oil on Canvas Painting

This captivating portrait by the leading late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century court artist, Sir Godfrey Kneller, shows Kneller’s delicate and intimate approach to his female faces, and is very like his individual portrait drawings with their emphasis on sharp features and alluring eyes. The sitter is unencumbered by high fashion or a background of stately topography. The emphasis is instead placed directly on the alluring femininity, and enhanced by the loose drapery and falling hair around her shoulder.

Over a white smock with voluminous sleeves, the sitter is wearing a cobalt blue silk gown with slashed sleeves held with huge diamond claps and pearl clasps on the bodice. At her breast she holds the gauze scarf that has been draped around her left shoulder. The hairstyle, known as the hurluberlu, first appeared around 1671. In the celebrated letters of Madame de Sévigné she accounted “Now just imagine the hair parted peasant fashion to within two inches of the back roll; the hair each side is cut in layers and made into round loose curls which hang about an inch below the ear; it looks very young and pretty - two bouquets of hair on each side... a large curl on top which sometimes falls down the neck.”

The fashionable hairstyle and clothing exude a sense of status and Augustan decorum and help to date this portrait to circa 1675 to 1685. This portrait was painted at the cusp of a new style… the Augustan style, which is generally taken to begin with the formation of a sophisticated metropolitan culture based partly on the new political order introduced by the constitutional settlement of 1688/9. Soon, sitters were to be portrayed no longer as a glittering court beauty with minutiae of fashion and fabric, but rather more restrained with a sense of simplicity and harmony, and Kneller excelled at this. Contemporary critics described Kneller’s work as a “nobler Beauty.” Nevertheless, bad dress equalled bad manners and the aims of the Augustan society were elegance and cadence.

Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723) dominates our understanding of British portraiture at the turn of the seventeenth century. With Van Dyck, Lely and Reynolds, his name has become synonymous with the visual interpretation of British history – not least because he painted almost every person of prominence in forty years of British public life. This reputation was well-deserved, and although Kneller's age embraced many accomplished painters - John Closterman, for example, Jonathan Richardson the Elder, or Michael Dahl- none came close to Kneller in immediate fame, or in such instant association in the popular mind with the exercise of portraiture. Kneller is remembered for having painted ten ruling sovereigns, including every reigning British monarch from King Charles II to King George I.

Kneller, an artist of German origin (born in Lübeck) and Dutch and Italian training, arrived in England probably in 1676, apparently attracted by a wish to see and study the works of Van Dyck' although Bainbrigg Buckeridge says that “By the importunity of some friends he was prevailed on to come into England'. Finding plentiful patronage in a society particularly well-disposed towards portrait-painting, he stayed and became a naturalised Englishman in 1683. Lely's death in 1680 left a huge gap in the market for court portraiture, and Kneller's new manner may have been part of a bid to fill this. By the middle of the decade, his reputation assured and his business booming Kneller had the confidence to develop a more independent style.

Measurements: Height 93cm, Width 80cm, Depth 7cm framed (Height 36.5”, Width 31.5”, Depth 2.75” framed

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