Artware Fineart has dated this Antique Oil Portrait Painting to the 1700s.
oil on panel
11 x 9 in. ( 28 x 23 cm.)
John Dryden was born at the vicarage of Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire, on August 9, 1631, son of Erasmus Dryden and Mary Pickering. His family were Parliamentary supporters with Puritan leanings. He attended Westminster Schoolas a king's scholar under Richard Busby and was an avid student of the classics. While at Westminster, Dryden published his first verses, an elegy "Upon the Death of Lord Hastings", in Lachrymæ Musarum (1649). He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1650, and took a BA in 1654.
Dryden moved to London around 1657, and first gained notice with his 'Heroic Stanzas' (1659) on the death of Lord Protector Cromwell. In the Royalist climate of the Restoration, he sensibly wrote Astraea Redux (1660) to celebrate the return ofKing Charles II. For the coronation, Dryden wrote "To His Sacred Majesty, A Panegyric" (1661). In 1662, Dryden wrote verses "To My Lord Chancellor" Clarendon, and was elected to the Royal Society. The theatres had been reopened, demand for entertainments was high, and Dryden set to writing plays. In 1663, Dryden married Lady Elizabeth Howard, the sister of his theatrical partner Sir Robert Howard, and the eldest daughter of the Earl of Berkshire. In 1665, the theatres were closed down because of the plague that raged in London, and the King's court relocated to Oxford. There, Dryden finally established a reputation as a playwright with The Indian Emperor (1665), a heroic drama.
The year 1666 was eventful in English history, including both the naval war with the Dutch, and the Great Fire of London. Dryden commemorated this 'year of wonders" in his long poem, Annus Mirabilis, in 1667. This poem secured him the position of Poet Laureate on the death of William D'Avenant in 1668. The same year, he was also given the degree of M. A. by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Dryden left his career as dramatist for a time and turned his attention to satire. His political satire on Monmouth and Shaftesbury, Absalom and Achitophel, appeared in 1681. It is one of the great English satires, and it brought him further favor with Charles II, who was pleased at this attack against the Whigs during the Exclusion Crisis.
This period saw some of Dryden's best poems, the Pindaric ode "Threnodia Augustalis" (1685) at the death of Charles II, the beautiful lyrical ode "To the Pious Memory ... of Mrs Anne Killigrew" (1686) written to commemorate a painter who drowned in the Thames, and "A Song for Saint Cecilia's Day" (1687). Dryden had long grappled with religious uncertainty, and converted into Roman Catholicism in 1686, the year after the ascension to the throne of King James II, a Catholic. In 1687, Dryden published The Hind and the Panther, an allegorical fable criticizing the Anglican church. Dryden suffered for this almost immediately. The Revolution of 1688, which placed the Protestant William III on the throne, caused him to be deprived of his laureateship, and what was worse, he was replaced by his old enemy, Shadwell.
Dryden returned to the theatre. He wrote the libretto to Purcell's opera King Arthur (1691); a tragicomedy, Don Sebastian (1690); a comedy of errors,Amphitryon (1690); and Cleomenes: the Spartan Hero (1692). Dryden's Love Triumphant (1694), the prologue of which announced it as his last play, was a failure.
Dryden died on April 30, 1700, soon after the publication of the Fables, of inflammation caused by gout. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Dryden was a good playwright and poet, a fine translator, a solid critic, and an excellent satirist whose works are still worthy of much admiration.
Artware Fineart has dated this Antique Oil Portrait Painting to the 1700s.
You can view the stock and full dealer information on the Artware Fineart Profile Page
Godfrey Kneller and Studio 1646-1723 Portrait of John Dryden 1631-1700
