Portrait of Sir Richard Knight C.1676; Studio of Willem Wissing (C.1656–1687), Oil on Canvas Painting

Depicted standing on a rocky outcrop wearing suit of armour over a white cravat, the gentleman is shown with such symbols of power - the plumed helmut, the armour, and the baton of command. His heroic visage suitably reflects his wealth and status and this martial-like characterisation was popular at the time. The extremely finely recorded face, painted with the utmost precision, is an exemplary artistic achievement and shows the artist’s Dutch training.

A feature of this portrait is its exquisite and unusual frame, with swags of flowers suspended across all four sides. The frame is highly unusual, very rare, and a work of art in itself.

The gentleman in Richard Knight (1639-1679) and he was a member of a family who were long established in the county having held lands there from the time of Edward II, if not earlier. Richard was the only son of Richard Knight of Chawton (died 1641/42) and Elizabeth Fielder. His father died when he was only two years of age and the young Richard’s mother, Elizabeth, managed his property until 1649, when she remarried.

On the 10th January 1667 Richard received the honour of Knighthood of the Royal Oak, soon after his marriage to Priscilla, daughter and heiress of Sir Robert Reynolds of Elvetham. Sir Richard was an honourable man with polished manners, highly cultured, and a patron of the arts. In 1679 when he was 40 years old, he died and left no children; the estate passed to another line of the family. Sir Richard left £500 for his monument to be built in Chawton Church (see photo).

An inventory taken on the death of Sir Richard at Chawton on 16th day of Sept 1679, by Mr Thomas Townsend, William Fisher, Thomas Mathew, and Edward Fisher states: “In the passage at the parlour staircase head: Item one chimed clock & case, three pictures where of one large & two small ones”. Perhaps our portrait was one of the mentioned.

The family’s seat is Chawton House near Farnham England. Although an earlier house was on the site, the descendants of Hugh de Port, William the Conqueror’s comrade in arms, lived at Chawton for nearly 500 years, before the house passed to distant relatives in 1458. John Knight purchased it in 1551 and from that time forward the estate and manor passed within the Knight family.

The date of 1588 remains at the back of the fireplace in the hall. It was the year of the great Armada, with which John Knight contributed £50 to the fund raised by Elizabeth I to resist the Spaniards. Later in the 18th century Jane Austen's brother Edward inherited the estate in 1794, and in 1809, moved his mother and sisters to a cottage in the village, now Jane Austen's House. The current member of the Knight family retains the freehold and the house is now Chawton House Library, one of the world’s leading centres for the studies of the lives and works of writing in English between 1600 to 1830.

During this period, artists, on this scale, painted both original compositions and copies of portraits that were given to friends and relatives or for their smaller homes. Our portrait, painted by Willem Wissing and his studio, is probably a prototype for a much larger portrait that is either lost or not yet recognised, and the most likely date of its execution was the period between Wissing’s arrival in England in 1676 and the death of the sitter in 1679. An almost exact version of our portrait (127 x 101.5cm) is in the Knight collection at Chawton House, and even though it is much larger in scale it does not appear to be a prime version.

William (Willem) Wissing was a Dutch artist who enjoyed a solid artistic training at The Hague. He came to London in 1676 and most probably joined the studio or Sir Peter Lely, whose practice he took over when Lely died, and painted very important aristocratic patrons. King Charles II commissioned his own portrait and that of his Queen Catherine of Braganza. Wissing died in 1687, aged just 31.

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