RKD STUDIES

Soest, Westphalia, 14 September 1618–London, 30 November 1680
Dutch-British painter, draughtsman and collector

After the death of Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641), Peter Lely became the most successful portrait painter in England. His highly organized and prolific workshop established a mode of portraiture that was to dominate British painting until his death and after through the work of successors such as Godfrey Kneller (1646–1723).

Born Pieter van der Faes to Dutch parents in the German province of Westphalia, he is reputed to have adopted the nickname ‘Lely’ after a heraldic lily carved on the gable of his family’s house in The Hague. In the 1630s he trained in the workshop of the Haarlem painter Frans Pietersz. de Grebber (1573–1649), who also trained Judith Leyster (1609–60).

A signed and dated landscape drawing in the British Museum may depict an English setting and would suggest that Lely had settled in London by 1643.¹ He was made a freeman of the Painter-Stainers’ Company in London on 26 October 1647 and by June 1650 he had settled in the Piazza in Covent Garden. Dulwich’s Nymphs by a Fountain (c. 1650) [2] exemplifies Lely’s early preoccupation with Arcadian subject matter and sensuous Venetian colouring.² Without any serious rivals, Lely became the natural successor to Van Dyck and secured the support of some of his most important patrons, including the earls of Northumberland and Pembroke. He soon abandoned subject pictures in favour of portraiture and, although he never quite achieved the subtlety or refinement of Van Dyck, he built a hugely successful career modelled on the earlier artist’s effortless elegance, fluid brushwork and a repertoire of ‘carelessly romantic’ poses and drapery.

On the restoration of the monarchy in 1661 Charles II (1630–65) appointed him as Principal Painter, a position he held until his death. Lely was known for his high living and assembled one of the largest and most important art collections in 17th-century England, including Van Dyck’s Cupid and Psyche (1639–40; Royal Collection) [3], bought at the sale of Charles I (1600–1649), the ‘Lely Venus’, a Roman 2nd century AD crouching Venus (BM, London) [4], and some 10,000 prints and drawings. He was knighted in January 1680; he died at his easel less than a year later.

LITERATURE
Graham 1695, pp. 343–4; Buckeridge 1706, pp. 444–7; Buckeridge 1754, pp. 402–4; Houbraken 1753, pp. 456–73; Baker 1912; Beckett 1951; Waterhouse 1953, pp. 62–7; Millar 1978; Talley 1981; MacLeod 2001; MacLeod & Alexander 2001; Curd 2010; Campbell 2012a; Joachimides 2015; Ecartico, no. 4546: http://www.vondel.humanities.uva.nl/ecartico/persons/4546 (Sept. 1, 2020); RKDartists&, no. 49235: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/49235 (Sept. 1, 2020).

1
Peter Lely
Self portrait of Peter Lely (1618-1680), c. 1650-1655
London (England), private collection Peter (Sir) Lely

2
Peter Lely
Nymphs by a fountain, c. 1650-1655
Dulwich (Southwark), Dulwich Picture Gallery, inv./cat.nr. DPG555

c. 1670, oil on canvas, 91.5 × 76.2 cm
Signed in monogram lower left: PL

PROVENANCE
Probably painted for Mary (1633–99) and Charles Beale I (1631–1705); Edward Lovibond I (d. 1737); by descent to Edward Lovibond II (1724–75); Lovibond sale, Skinner, 27–28 May 1776;³ Charles Fairfax Murray (1849–1919); Charles Butler (1822–1910) acquired from Fairfax Murray, c. 1885; by descent to Charles H. A. Butler and his family; sold to Peter Nahum 2006; Lowell Libson Ltd; Sotheby’s, New York, 29 Jan. 2009, lot 62; bt Simon C. Dickinson Ltd; Purchased by Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2010.

REFERENCES
Walsh & Jeffree 1975, pp. 32, 58; Campbell 2012a, p. 138 (fig. 59); Jonker & Bergvelt 2016, pp. 128–9; RKD, no. 298458: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/images/298458 (Sept. 1, 2020).

EXHIBITIONS
London 1960–61, p. 57, no. 168 (as Portrait of a Young Man, ‘may be a member of the Beale family’).

TECHNICAL NOTES
The painting is in good condition. The lining is quite old but seems secure. Some subtlety in the paint surface may have been lost through wear and overcleaning in the past. The sky is worn and discoloured. The drapery appears flat with loss of definition in the shadows due to wear and restoration. There is some weave interference in the paint surface due to the lining process. The varnish has discoloured to some extent but is visually acceptable. Previous recorded treatment: 2010, S. Plender and N. Ryder.

RELATED WORKS
1) Peter Lely, A Boy as a Shepherd, c. 1658–60, canvas, 91.4 x 75.6 cm. DPG, London, DPG563 [5].⁴
2) Mary Beale, Portrait of a Youth, canvas, 76.5 x 63.8 cm. DPG, London, DPG574 [6].⁵
3a) Charles Beale II after Peter Lely (after DPG662), Portrait of Bartholomew Beale, red chalk, strengthened with graphite and black chalk, 191 x 164 mm. BM, London, Gg,5.72.⁶
3b) Charles Beale II after Peter Lely (after 1; DPG563), Portrait of a Youth as a Shepherd, red chalk, strengthened with graphite and black chalk, 207 x 181 mm. BM, London, Gg,5.65.⁷
4) Peter Lely, Portrait of a Lady, c. 1663, canvas, 91.4 x 76.2 cm. Private collection.⁸
5) Hellenistic, the Arundel Head, second century BC, bronze, h. 29.21 cm. BM, London, 1760,0919.1.⁹

This picture was purchased in 2010 as a pair to A Boy as a Shepherd (Related works, no. 1) [5]; they have very similar spectacular frames, but whether they were intended as a pair by the artist is a matter of debate (see below). The painting is likely to depict Bartholomew Beale (1656–1709), the elder son of Mary Beale (1633–99), one of the first professional women artists in England and a friend of Lely. As a child Bartholomew assisted his mother in her studio, but in the 1680s he studied medicine in Cambridge and settled in Coventry to practice as a physician. He would have been about fourteen when he sat for this painting, and the full lips and impressive head of curls compare well with portraits of him by his mother at the Geffrye Museum (c. 1660) and the one at Dulwich (c. 1680–85, Related works, no. 2) [6] which is thought to depict him as a young man. The bust on which Bartholomew rests his right hand has been identified by Nicholas Penny as based on the Arundel Head (2nd century BC; Related works, no. 5), then thought to depict the poet Homer.¹⁰

The Beale identification is strengthened further by two chalk drawings (Related works, nos 3a, 3b) by Bartholomew’s younger brother Charles Beale II (1660–1714) after this portrait and Dulwich’s Boy as a Shepherd (c. 1658–60). The diary of Charles Beale senior indicates that both boys had access to Lely’s studio, where Charles junior may have seen these paintings, or indeed they could have been hanging in the Beale home, as the parents were known to have commissioned work from Lely in order to observe his technique. It is unlikely, however, that the two pictures form pendants: the more cursory Bartholomew picture lacks the subtle delicacy of the Shepherd Boy, pointing towards a later date in Lely’s career.

In his ‘Visits to Country Seats’ Horace Walpole recorded Boy as a Shepherd in the collection of Edward Lovibond (1723–75) at Hampton c. 1770, as well as ‘several [other] pictures that were Mrs Beale’s’.¹¹ It was presumably while in the Lovibond collection that Boy as a Shepherd was placed in a magnificent English Rococo frame of c. 1745. The portrait of Bartholomew Beale and one of an unidentified female sitter (c. 1663; Related works, no. 4)¹² have very similar frames [7],¹³ which would suggest that all three paintings were together in the Lovibond collection, where they received comparable frames. There is no evidence that they were united before the Lovibond collection, or whether they were identified as portraits of Beale family members.

The three paintings were separated in Lovibond’s posthumous sale in May 1776; Boy as a Shepherd travelled to Strawberry Hill with Walpole, and the two other portraits passed on to unknown location(s). The next known owner of what is now DPG662 is the pre-Raphaelite painter and collector Charles Fairfax Murray (1849–1919), who sold it, and presumably the portrait of the female sitter, to Charles Butler (1822–1910) by 1885. Fairfax did later own Boy as a Shepherd before bequeathing it to Dulwich Picture Gallery, but that was not until c. 1908, more than twenty years after he had sold the other portrait to Butler.

DPG662
Peter Lely
Portrait of Bartholomew Beale (1656-1709), with the bust of Homer, c. 1670
Dulwich (Southwark), Dulwich Picture Gallery, inv./cat.nr. DPG662

5
Peter Lely
Boy as a Shepherd, c. 1658-1665
Dulwich (Southwark), Dulwich Picture Gallery, inv./cat.nr. DPG563

6
Mary Beale
Portrait of a Youth, c. 1685
Dulwich (Southwark), Dulwich Picture Gallery, inv./cat.nr. DPG574

7
DPG662 in it's Rococo frame