Godfrey Kneller: 101 Paintings

Godfrey Kneller (1646–1723) was German-born painter who settled in England and became the leading portraitist there in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

He studied in Amsterdam under Bol, a pupil of Rembrandt, and later in Italy, before moving to England, probably in the mid-1670s. The opportune death of serious rivals (notably Lely in 1680) and his own arrogant self-assurance enabled him to establish himself as the dominant court and society painter by the beginning of the reign of James II (1685). He was the last foreign-born artist to dominate English painting, but it needed a Hogarth and a Reynolds to break through the conventions he had popularized.