031

  • Nell Gwyn, after the 1675 painting

  • 1793
  • After Sir Peter Lely (b. Dutch, active England 1618-1680), drawn by Sylvester Harding (British 1745-1809) engraved by Sheneker
  • Engraving
  • 12.5 x 10.0 cm., 4-15/16 x 4" image
  • Catherine Carter Goebel, Paul A. Anderson Chair in the Arts Purchase, Paul A. Anderson Art History Collection, Augustana College 2011.9

Essay by Jennifer Popple, Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts

"Portrait painting has ever been the art most appreciated in England-the most appreciated and yet the most neglected." (L.C. 111)

Sir Peter Lely was one of England's most famous seventeenth-century portrait painters, living and working through some of the country's most uncertain times. He began working as King Charles I's court painter until Charles' beheading in 1642, contributed to Oliver Cromwell's dour Puritan-influenced portraits (Knoppers 1282), and served as King Charles II's official court painter when Charles was "restored" to the throne in 1660.

The portrait was considered a sign of social status, and Lely's studio was popular with both aristocrats and members of the new middle class. After Lely would paint a subject's head, his students would finish the portrait, choosing from an array of pre-determined poses. Among Lely's most famous contributions were the "Windsor Beauties," ten portraits of women from Charles II's court, including Barbara Palmer, one of Charles' mistresses. These portraits, "handsomely déshabillé and languorous," conveyed the hedonistic, libertine spirit of Charles II's court (Rodgers). Charles' mistresses were not confined to the aristocracy; a lover of the theatre, Charles had affairs with at least two actresses, including Nell Gwyn.

This portrait demonstrates the dual nature of Nell Gwyn's image by 1675. Gwyn was born into abject poverty and worked in one of London's seediest brothels before getting her start as one of England's first actresses. By 1675, however, Gwyn was retired from the stage and enjoying life as Charles II's mistress. Her hair is styled in the latest fashion and she wears the indicators of her material wealth, an expensive strand of pearls, in her hair and around her neck. In that respect, the painting is of a moneyed woman, worthy of respect and titles in English society.

There are marked differences, however, between this portrait and those of the Windsor Beauties, which all indicate Gwyn's "base" background. Her clothing is not elaborate and lush; rather, it appears as if Gwyn is wearing a nightgown and is in a state of partial undress. As a subject, she is captured raising a cloth over what the viewer can imagine are her exposed breasts. These details demonstrate that Gwyn is also a lower class woman, the property of any man who desires her. The portrait is a realistic portrayal of Nell Gwyn at this point in her life, as a woman in a liminal position: both lady and kept woman, moneyed and in need of protection, demure and sexual, base-born but intimately connected to the monarch. She was a woman situated between two oppositional social positions, incapable of fully occupying either.