One of the rooms had a number of portraits by him as was pointed out to us by one of the guides who was rather dismissive of the man's skills.
"He always painted women to look better than they were. Women didn't have noses shaped like that," he said before adding that Lely was what amounted to a jobbing artist who moved round from house to house painting portraits, many of which bore a remarkable resemblance to each other.
So was this true? Well not exactly as a bit of research established. Lely was born Pieter Van Der Faes in Holland in 1618. He changed his name to Lely and arrived in London in 1641 and quickly established himself as the premier portrait painter in England. He was portrait artist to King Charles First and later followed a similar path with Oliver Cromwell on Charles' execution. He continued as a royal painter under Charles Second.
Demand for Lely's work was high and he had a large and prolific workshop. Often Lely would paint a head and his pupils would complete the work in one of a series of numbered poses. I would suggest that this is where our guide got his comments from. As a result of all this the quality of "his work" is variable.
It is possible that thousands of these portraits exist ranging from masterpieces to cheap replicas.
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Over the next few weeks I would like to share some of my Spotify playlists with you. If you have access/subscribe to Spotify just follow the link below for a playlist of songs mentioned in the book Hotel California by Bernie Hoskyns.
https://open.spotify.com/user/petersteward/playlist/27RzUQ9TQ92bfZfS1sYXqE