Miniature Portrait of Thomas Shadwell

ART > Paintings Dealer: Artware Fineart Contact: Greg Page-Turner - Email Dealer
Price: $1,500.00 USD  - Currency Converter Shipping inside United Kingdom: Quoted at time of purchase Shipping outside United Kingdom: Quoted at time of purchase

Description: The sitter: English playwright and miscellaneous writer, was born about 1642, at Santon Hall, Norfolk, according to his son's account. He was educated at Bury St Edmund's School, and at Caius College, Cambridge, where he was entered in 1656. He left the university without a degree, and joined the Middle Temple. In 1668 he produced a prose comedy, The Sullen Lovers, or the Impertinents, based on a play of Moliere, and written in avowed imitation of Ben Jonson. His best plays are Epsom Wells (1672), for which Sir Charles Sedley wrote a prologue, and the Squire of Alsatia (1688). Alsatia was the cant name for Whitefriars, then a kind of sanctuary for persons liable to arrest, and the play represents, in dialogue full of the argot of the place, the adventures of a young heir who falls into the hand of the sharpers there. For fourteen years from the production of his first comedy to his memorable encounter with Dryden, Shadwell produced a play nearly every year. These productions display a genuine hatred of shams, and a rough but honest moral purpose. They are disfigured by indecencies, but present a vivid picture of contemporary manners. Shadwell is chiefly remembered as the unfortunate Mac Flecknoe of Dryden's satire, the "last great prophet of tautology," and the literary son and heir of Richard Flecknoe: - "The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, But Shadwell never deviates into sense." Dryden had furnished Shadwell with a prologue to his True Widow (1679), and in spite of momentary differences, the two had been apparently on friendly terms. But when. Dryden joined the court party, and produced Absalom and Achitopizel and The Medal, Shadwell became the champion of the true-blue Protestants, and made a scurrilous attack on the poet in The Medal of John Bayes: a Satire against Folly and Knavery (1682). Dryden immediately retorted in MacFlecknoe, or a Satire on the True Blue Protestant Poet, T.S. (1682), in which Shadwell's personalities were returned with interest. A month later he contributed to Nahum Tate's continuation of Absalom and Achitopizel satirical portraits of Elkanah Settle as Doeg and of Shadwell as 0g. In 1687 Shadwell attempted to answer these attacks in a version of the tenth satire of Juvenal. At the Whig triumph in 1688 he superseded his enemy as poet laureate and historiographer royal. He died at Chelsea on the I9th of November 1692. His son, Charles, was the author of The Fair Quaker of Deal and other plays, collected and published in 1720. A complete edition of Shadwell's works was published by his son Sir John Shadwell in 1720. His other dramatic works are - The Royal Shepherdess (1669), an adaptation of John Fountain's Rewards of Virtue; The Humorist (1671); The Miser (1672), adapted from Moliere; Psyche (1675); The Libertine (I676); The Virtuoso (1676); The history of Timon of Athens the Man-hater (I678), - on this Shakespearian adaptation see 0. Beber, Shadwell's Bearbeitung des. - - Timon of Athens (Rostock, 1897); A True Widow (1679); The Woman Captain (1680), revived in 1744 as The Prodigal; The Lancashire Witches and Teague O'Divelly, the Irish Priest (1682); Bury Fair (1689); The Amorous Bigot, with the second part of Teague O'Divelly (1690); The Scowerers (1691); and The Volunteers, or Stockjobbers, published posthumously (1693). The artist: Sir Godfrey Kneller (c. 1646-1723) was born Gottfried Kniller in Lubeck, Germany, probably on 8 August 1646, third son of the portraitist and chief surveyor of the city, Zacharius Kniller and his wife Luci (nee Beuten). Intended for a military career and was sent to Leyden to study mathematics and fortification. Studied with his father’s blessing under Ferdinand Bol and Rembrandt in the early 1660s. His first known dated portrait was painted 1666. Visited Italy (Rome and Venice) 1672-5. There he studied from the antique and the paintings of Raphael, Carracci, Tititan and Tintoretto. Worked in the studios of Carlo Maratti and Bernini. Then Nuremberg 1674 and Hamburg before settling in London 1676, where he first stayed with Hamburg born merchant John Banckes. By 1679 was patronized by the King and was sent by Charles to France 1684/5 to draw the portrait of Louis XIV. Jointly appointed with Riley the Principal Painter to William and Mary 1688. On Riley’s death in 1691 he continued alone and retrained that office until his death. Accompanied William III, his greatest patron, to the Low Countries 1697, commissioning from him a portrait of the Elector of Bavaria, with whom William was seeking an alliance. His style changed after this visit, and his creamy colours were laid on with more dash and with a lighter, almost Rococo touch. Knighted 1692 and made a baronet 1715. Maintained a busy studio, which was for a time presided over by Edward Byng, producing a great many copies of his commissioned portraits. Kneller created the influential kit-cat format (36 x 28 in.) showing one hand, for his portraits of members of the Kit-Cat Club (the leaders of the Whig establishment). In 1709 Christopher Wren designed a country house for him, Whitton, near Hounslow, Middlesex. First governor of the first ‘Academy’ in London 1711-18, when he was succeeded by Thornhill. Kneller dominated portraiture, and remained the most distinguished and successful portrait painter in England until his death in London 19 October 1723. Vertue said of him: ‘He has been the Morning star for all other Portrait Painters in his Time to follow’. He was Court Painter during five reigns. He worked rapidly and his best portraits show considerable sensitivity and understanding of character. Such was the demand that his studio produced work of widely varying quality, making connoisseurship extremely difficult. Horace Walpole’s verdict on Kneller was that ‘where he offered one picture to fame he sacrificed twenty to lucre’. To judge him fairly, the 6,000+ portraits attributed to him, or his studio, should be reduced to a much smaller number that represent him at his personal best. Waterhouse justifiably describes him as ‘the great master of the English baroque protrait’. Among his pupils and assistants were John James Bakker, Edward and Robert Byng, Joseph Highmore, Marcellus Laroon (drapery), John Pieters (drapery), Jean Baptist Gaspar (poses), Fancatti (copyist), George Marshall, Rudolf Schmuz, James Worsdale, Charles Jervas, Jean Baptiste Monnoyer (flowers), Henry Vergazon (architecture and landscapes), Jacob Van Der Roer, John Zachary Kneller (copyist), Hamlet Winstanley and possibly J.L. Hirschmann, Henry Tilson and Warner Hassells. Often signed and dated his pictures, sometimes with a monogram ‘GK’.

Status: For Sale	Reference#: 2583
Condition: Good overall condition.	Year: c. 1670
Country: United Kingdom	Maker: Manner of Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723)
Height: 2 in. (5.08 cm)
Width: 2 in. (5.08 cm)
Title: Miniature Portrait of Thomas Shadwell (1642-1692), Poet Laurette and Lithographer to King William III and Queen Mary, c. 1670	Style: 17th Century
Materials: Watercolour on card	Type: Miniature

Dealer Policies: Artware Fineart Policy Details

Dealer Accepts: