Lot 217: SAMUEL VAN HOOGSTRATEN 1627 - 1678

PORTRAIT OF SIR NORTON KNATCHBULL, 1ST BT. (1601-1684)

measurements note
203 by 127 cm., 80 by 50 in.

Full length, standing, wearing a black tunic and white collar, a stick in his right hand

Signed and inscribed l.l.: AET65 1667 / SvH and later inscribed: Sr Norton Knatchbull Bar / ob 1684

Oil on canvas

LITERATURE

Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, Kentish Family, 1960, illus. opposite p. 17;
Ellis Waterhouse, The Dictionary of 16th and 17th Century British Portraiture, 1988, p. 131

NOTE

The sitter was the eldest son of Thomas Knatchbull of Maidstone (lot 210) and his wife Eleanor (lot 211), daughter of John Astley. Educated at Eton and St. John's College, Cambridge, he entered the Middle Temple in 1624. In 1636 he succeeded to the estates of his uncle, Sir Norton Knatchbull (lot 208). In 1639 he was elected M.P. for New Romney, and made a baronet in 1641. Though originally an opponent of Charles I, he was fined by the House of Commons for neglecting his services to the house, and by his delay in taking the Covenant he showed his distaste for militant Presbyterianism. He was a noted scholar with a substantial library and his Animadversiones in libros novi testamenti, published in 1659, was much admired and reprinted both in England and on the continent. In 1660 he was re-elected with his son to New Romney on condition that they both became freemen of the borough. He was elected again in 1661 and continued to be active in the Cavalier Parliament. He served on thirty-three committees, including the committee set up to amend habeas corpus. In 1673 he served on the committee to prevent abuses at elections. From 1660-1680 he was commissioner for assessment in Kent, took responsibility for Denge and Walland marshes in Kent in 1660, and he was commissioner for recusants in 1675. By his first wife, Dorothy, daughter of Thomas Westrow, Grocer of London, whom he married in 1630, he had three sons and ten daughters. In 1662 he married Dorothy, daughter of Sir Robert Honywood of Charing in Kent.

In Samuel van Hoogstraten was a Dutch painter of portraits, architectual views, and trompe l'oeil pictures. He was a pupil of Rembrandt, and worked in England between 1662 and 1667. This is a rare example of his English portraiture.