Scientist of the Day - Peter Lely
Portrait of William Harvey, studio of Peter Lely, oil on canvas, ca 1650, Wellcome Collection, London (wellcomecollection.org)
Peter Lely, a Dutch/English portrait painter, was born on Sep. 14, 1618. He showed artistic promise at an early age, and when the Flemish portrait painter to the English court of King Charles I, Anthony van Dyck, died suddenly in 1641, Lely apparently decided he would be his Royal successor. At any rate, Lely showed up in England in 1643 and set up shop in London. Fortunately, he had plenty of time to build his clientele and reputation, as Charles I lost his head and Oliver Cromwell stepped in for a 12-year Interregnum. By the time of the Restoration in 1660, Lely had established himself as the supreme portraitist in all the land, and King Charles II soon made it official, appointing Lely as his court artist. Lely painted lots of ladies and gentlemen of the court, and a few mistresses as well, such as Nell Gwynn. None of that matters a fig to us (except for Nell Gwynn – see below), since we run a science series here. Fortunately, Lely also painted portraits of scientists, mostly members of the newly established Royal Society of London, chartered in 1662, and thus he is worthy of our attention.
Self-portrait of Peter Lely, oil on canvas, ca 1660, National Portrait Gallery, London (npg.org.uk)
Lely painted William Harvey, some 25 years after Harvey announced his discovery of the circulation of the blood in 1628 (first image). This painting is in the Wellcome Collection in London, although most of Lely’s portraits are in the National Portrait Gallery in the same city. Lely painted William Brouncker, the first President of the Royal Society (third image, just below). He could have painted Robert Hooke, who came to London from the Isle of Wight in the 1650s to be a painter and began working in Lely’s studio, and remained friends with Lely even after he switched from painting to mechanics. That Lely did not give us a portrait of Hooke is one of the minor tragedies of English science, since no one else portrayed Hooke either, and thus we have no idea what he looked like.
Portrait of William Brouncker, 1st President of the Royal Society of London, oil on canvas, by Peter Lely, 1674, Royal Society, London (artuk.org)
Lely did not portray Isaac Newton, who rose to prominence after Lely’s death in 1680, but he trained one of the painters who did, Godfrey Kneller, who in turn trained John Vanderbank, who also portrayed Newton. We have written posts on both artists.
Portrait of Prince Rupert, Count Palatine, by Peter Lely, oil on canvas, ca 1670, National Portrait Gallery, London (npg.org.uk)
Prince Rupert of the Palatine was a military man, not a scientist, but he did introduce Rupert’s drops, those exploding tears of glass, to the Royal Society in 1661. Lely painted his portrait about that time (fourth image, just above). Rupert also introduced the mezzotint to England, which attracted the enthusiasm of Lely, because it was the perfect medium for reproducing portraits, providing another source of income for portraitists like himself. Lely's portrait of Rupert is a powerful one. You can read about Rupert and mezzotints in our post on Rupert, which however fails to say much about Rupert’s drops. You can learn about them in our post on Geminiano Montanari.
Portrait of James Ussher, after Peter Lely, oil on canvas, 1654, National Portrait Gallery, London (npg.org.uk)
My favorite of all of Lely's portraits does not fit easily under the "famous scientists" rubric, since James Ussher of Armagh was a Bishop in the Anglican Church. But since Ussher is best-known for fixing the creation of the Earth to 4004 BC, and since we began an exhibition on geological time, Vulcan's Forge (2004), with Ussher's commentary on the Old Testament, where the 4004 BC figure first appeared, Ussher has always been an honorary geologist to us. However you feel about that, there is no denying that Lely's portrait is one of the finest portrayals of the entire century, managing to make Ussher look wise, understanding, and a bit melancholy, all at the same time (fifth image).
“Lady in a Blue Dress,” oil on canvas, possibly from the workshop of Godfrey Kneller, late-17th-early-18th-century, once attributed to Peter Lely as a portrait of Nell Gwynn, The Linda Hall (The Linda Hall)
We at the Linda Hall have a soft spot for Peter Lely, because early on in the Library’s existence, one of the Trustees acquired a full-length portrait of a woman in a blue dress that was thought to be Nell Gwynn, and it was attributed to Lely. A recent reappraisal has shifted the authorship to someone perhaps in the studio of Godfrey Kneller, and it is no longer thought to portray Nell Gwynn, but some later Lady at Court. But it still hangs in our History of Science Reading Room, and to a few of us old-timers, the name “Peter Lely" springs to mind whenever we see it, which is every day, when we walk in (sixth image, just above).
After Lely died unexpectedly in 1680, he was buried in St. Paul's Churchyard in Covent Garden, and a memorial portrait was commissioned from the renowned lime-wood sculptor Grinling Gibbons, whom Lely helped get established in England. The memorial sculpture was destroyed in a fire in the late 18th century. What a tragedy it was to lose that work of art!
William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.
