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Peter Lely
Portrait painter and collector of Old Masters, Sir Peter Lely
(original name, Pieter van der Faes) was active in England from
the early 1640s.
Born at Soest, Germany in Westphalia to Dutch parents, he trained
in Haarlem becoming master of the Haarlem guild in 1637.
Little is known of his work prior to his arrival to London. He
became a freeman of the Painter-Stainers’ Company in 1647
and his early English paintings were influenced by Van Dyck and
Dutch baroque style. They were mainly mythological scenes (e.g.,
‘Nymphs by a Fountain’, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London)
and portraits set in landscape, often in pastoral mood, for which
he became famous.
Lely quickly established himself as a portraitist to Charles I.
Swiftly changing his patrons, his reputation and fortune grew steadily
and after the execution of the king he served under Oliver Cromwell
and his son.
In 1660 Charles II appointed Lely his Principal Painter in Ordinary.
He was naturalized in 1662. Although his works vary in quality,
and in some he was greatly assisted by his pupils, he is regarded
as a leading artist of the Restoration. Lely was knighted shortly
before his death in 1680.
Many of his paintings now hang in the National Portrait Gallery
in London, Hampton Court, the great house at Knole in Kent, and
the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, where his "Flagmen
of Lowestoft" series includes George Monck, Cornelis Tromp,
William Penn, George Ayscue, and Edward Montagu.
The paintings are the excellent portrayal of the events and scenes
that we see around us. The painters are the best cameras of the
world. They reproduce many different types of pictures. They even
draw imaginary pictures that do not exist in this world. We tend
to use both thinned oil paints and dense oil paints. Masterpieces
can be dyed more than once, but each time it may be different from
the existing paintings.h
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