Sale at Easton Neston

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Lot 162
  • 162

Sir Peter Lely and Studio 1618 - 1680

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Description

  • Sir Peter Lely and Studio
  • Portrait of King Charles II
  • oil on canvas, in a fine George III carved giltwood and gesso frame, bordered with lozenges alternating with paterae, within an outer anthemion moulded border
  • 218 by 134cm.; 86 by 53in.
full length, standing, wearing the robes of the Order of the Garter, his plumed hat on a table to the left

Provenance

Possibly commissioned by William Fermor, Lord Lempster (1648-1711)

Literature

George Baker, The History and Antiquities of the County of Northamptonshire, 1838, part IV, p.145;
EN 1923, p.11, item 10, £250, in the Picture Gallery;
AP 1927, p.15, item 8, £250, in the Picture Gallery

Catalogue Note

In October 1661 Charles II granted Lely, as Principal Painter, an annual pension of £200 'as formerly to Sr Vandyke'.  Lely went on to paint celebrated images of the King and his Court.  His last official image of the King dates from c. 1675, and shows the monarch seated wearing Garter robes (The Duke of Grafton's collection).  This fine full length portrait also dates from the final years of the artist's life.                                                                  

The eighteenth century neo-classical frame is of unusually high quality and may have been commissioned especially as this painting hung above the fire place in the small drawing room (now the library) in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.