as court painter. Lely was
knighted by Charles II., married an English woman, and had a son and a
daughter, who died young. He made a large fortune, dying at last of
apoplexy, with which he was seized as he was painting the Duchess of
Somerset, when he was sixty-two years of age, in 1680.

With regard to Lely's character, we may safely judge from his works that
he was such a man as Samuel Pepys, 'of easy virtue,' a man holding a low
enough standard by which to measure himself and others. Mr Palgrave
quotes from Mr Leslie the following characteristic anecdote of Lely,
which seems to prove that he was aware of, and coolly accepted, the
decline of art in his generation and person. A nobleman said to Lely,
'How is it that you have so great a reputation, when you know, as well
as I do, that you are no painter?' 'True, but I am the best you have,'
was the answer. Lely's punishment followed him into his art, for
beginning by copying Van Dyck, it is said of Lely that he degenerated in
his work till it bore the very 'stamp of the depravity of the age.'

Lely's sitters were mostly women. Among them was one who deserved a
fitter painter, Mistress Anne Killigrew, Dryden's--

'Youngest virgin daughter of the skies.'

In Lely's portrait of her, she is a neat, slightly prim, delicate
beauty, with very fine features, and such sleepy eyes, as were probably
the gift of Lely, since he has bestowed them generally on the women whom
he painted. Mistress Anne Killigrew's hair is in curls, piled up in
front, but hanging down loosely behind. Her bodice is gathered together
by a brooch, and she has another brooch on one shoulder. She wears a
light pearl necklace, and 'drops' shaped like shamrocks in her ears.

Lely painted both Charles I, and Cromwell, who desired his painters to
omit 'no pimple or wart,' but to paint his face as they saw it.

Among less notable personages Lely painted Monk, Duke of Albemarle, and
his rough Duchess, once a camp follower, according to popular rumour,
and named familiarly by the contemptuous wits of the day 'Nan Clarges.'
It is with not more honourable originals than poor 'Nan Clarges' that
Lely's name as a painter is chiefly associated. We know what an evil
time the years after the Restoration proved in England, and it was to
immortalize, as far as he could, the vain, light women of the
generation that Lely lent what skill he possessed. There their pictures
hang in what has been called 'the Beauty Room'