Pieter van der Faes was born to Dutch parents on 14 September 1618 at Soest in Westphalia. His father was an officer serving in the army of the Elector of Brandenburg. Lely studied painting in Haarlem, where he may have been apprenticed to Pieter de Grebber. He became a Master of the Guild of Saint Luke in Haarlem in 1637. He is reputed to have adopted the surname ‘Lely’ from an heraldic lily on the gable of the house where his father was born in The Hague. Lely arrived in London in around 1641 and his early English paintings, mainly mythological or religious scenes, or portraits set in a pastoral landscape, demonstrate the influence of van Dyck and the Dutch baroque. However, he quickly recognised the strength of the market in portraiture. He was a master colourist, his style best manifested in exquisite draperies and his portraiture flatters sitters. Working for many of the late Sir Anthony van Dyck’s patrons, Lely took the opportunity to study his predecessor’s paintings carefully. He incorporated van Dyck’s sense of scale, shimmering handling of paint and repertoire of design and accessories with his own impeccable drawing and Dutch qualities of rich colour, dramatic lighting, and romantic landscape. Lely often initially sketched the posture of his sitter in chalk on paper, and this initial design was shown to the sitter for approval and was subsequently lightly drawn upon the canvas. His portraits were well received and he was appointed Freeman of the Painter-Stainers’ Company in 1647. He was portrait artist to King Charles I, but after his execution in Whitehall on 30 January 1649, Lely served the new Commonwealth regime. According to Horace Walpole, Oliver Cromwell said to him: ‘Mr Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it.’ In about 1650 the poet Sir Richard Lovelace wrote two poems about Lely - Peinture and ‘See what a clouded majesty….’ One of Lely’s most important patrons during the Interregnum was the Capel family. He had almost certainly painted Arthur, Lord Capel in 1647 and he probably began to paint for them again after the marriage in 1653 of Arthur, 2nd Lord Capel (raised to the peerage as Earl of Essex at the Restoration), to Lady Elizabeth Percy, daughter of the Earl of Northumberland. Documents in the British National Archive disclose that Lely travelled to Holland in 1656, in the company of Hugh May (PRO, State Papers, Domestic, 25/77, 150) which details the granting of a pass for Holland to ‘Peter Lely and his Servt Hugh May.’ It has therefore been suggested that May’s role as Royalist agent under the Commonwealth was responsible for Lely’s introduction to the Stuart court in exile. After the Restoration in 1660, Lely was appointed as Charles II’s Principal Painter in Ordinary in 1661, with a stipend of £200 per year, as van Dyck had enjoyed in the previous Stuart reign. Lely succeeded in capturing the court’s sensuous languor and assembled one of England’s finest art collections. For many years he had no serious rivals and was enormously influential. He became a naturalised English subject in 1662. Demand for portraits was high at the time and Lely’s school was a well-oiled machine. After he had painted a sitter’s head, his pupils would often complete the portrait in one of a series of numbered poses. As a result, Lely was the first English painter who has left ‘an enormous mass of work.’ By the time of the Restoration in 1660, Lely was already established as the best portrait painter ‘in large’ in England and Anne Hyde would become one of his most important patrons (her stunning portrait by Lely may be seen above). She and her husband, James, Duke of York sat to Lely on a number of occasions. Anne Hyde would also commission Lely’s famous series of ten portraits of ladies of the Royal Court, known as The Windsor Beauties, formerly at Windsor Castle, but now at Hampton Court Palace; he completed a similar series for Althrop; and painted a series of twelve admirals and senior captains who had fought under the Duke of York in the first action of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, known as the Flagmen of Lowestoft, (now mostly owned by the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich). His portraits Prince Rupert and Sir John Lawson (copy at Greenwich), remain in the Royal Collection. Lely’s most famous non-portrait work is probably Nymphs by a Fountain (Dulwich Art Gallery). He encouraged Dutch mezzotinters to come to England to copy his work, thus laying the foundations of the English mezzotint tradition. He was knighted by King Charles II in 1680. Always conscious of his position, Lely conducted himself in a lordly manner; Samuel Pepys found him a ‘mighty proud man, and full of state.’ He lived well and accumulated an impressive collection of Old Masters, with examples by Veronese, Titian, Claude Lorrain and Rubens, and accumulated a fabulous collection of drawings. He died on 30 November of a fit of apoplexy at his easel in Covent Garden, whilst painting a portrait of the Duchess of Somerset. He was buried at St Paul’s Church nearby. His art collection was sold after his death, raising the immense sum of £26,000. Some items in it which had been acquired from the dispersal of King Charles I’s art collection, such as the Lely Venus, were re-acquired by the Royal Collection. Forty-five portraits painted by Lely may be found in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Lely’s 31 surviving black chalk drawings of the ancient ceremony of the Garter Procession (1660-70) may be found in the collection of the V&A. The series recordes the passage of the various participants on their route through Westminster. The annual Procession of the Order of the Garter was introduced in the mid-14th century and is held in Windsor on St George’s Day, (23 April) every year. During the Civil War and Interregnum, when the monarch was in exile, the Order was suspended. After the Restoration in 1660, it was revived and its ceremony recommenced, with the King at its head. By way of celebration, a far more elaborate costume was introduced.