Blenheim Palace is a country house in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England. It is the seat of the Dukes of Marlborough. Originally called Blenheim Castle, it has been known as Blenheim Palace since the 19th century. One of England's largest houses, it was built between 1705 and 1722, and designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.
Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1st Baronet was a German-born British painter. The leading portraitist in England during the late Stuart and early Georgian eras, he served as court painter to successive English and British monarchs, including Charles II of England and George I of Great Britain. Kneller also painted scientists such as Isaac Newton, foreign monarchs such as Louis XIV of France and visitors to England such as Michael Shen Fu-Tsung. A pioneer of the kit-cat portrait, he was also commissioned by William III of England to paint eight "Hampton Court Beauties" to match a similar series of paintings of Charles II's "Windsor Beauties" that had been painted by Kneller's predecessor as court painter, Peter Lely.
The National Maritime Museum (NMM) is a maritime museum in Greenwich, London. It is part of Royal Museums Greenwich, a network of museums in the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site. Like other publicly funded national museums in the United Kingdom, it has no general admission charge; there are admission charges for most side-gallery temporary exhibitions, usually supplemented by many loaned works from other museums.
Greenwich Hospital was a permanent home for retired sailors of the Royal Navy, which operated from 1692 to 1869. Its buildings, initially Greenwich Palace, in Greenwich, London, were later used by the Royal Naval College, Greenwich and the University of Greenwich, and are now known as the Old Royal Naval College. The word "hospital" was used in its original sense of a place providing hospitality for those in need of it, and did not refer to medical care, although the buildings included an infirmary which, after Greenwich Hospital closed, operated as Dreadnought Seaman's Hospital until 1986.
Queen's House is a former royal residence in the London borough of Greenwich, which presently serves as a public art gallery. It was built between 1616 and 1635 on the grounds of the now demolished Greenwich Palace, a few miles downriver from the City of London. In its current setting, it forms a central focus of the Old Royal Naval College with a grand vista leading to the River Thames, a World Heritage Site called, Maritime Greenwich. The Queen's House architect, Inigo Jones, was commissioned by Queen Anne of Denmark in 1616 and again to finish the house in 1635 by Queen Henrietta Maria. The House was commissioned by both Anne and Henrietta as a retreat and place to display and enjoy the artworks they had accumulated and commissioned; this includes a ceiling of the Great Hall that features a work by Orazio Gentileschi titled Allegory of Peace and the Arts.
The Palace of Placentia, also known as Greenwich Palace, was an English royal residence that was initially built by prince Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, in 1443. Over the centuries it took several different forms, until turned into a hospital in the 1690s. The palace was a place designed for pleasure, entertainment and an escape from the city. It was located at Greenwich on the south bank of the River Thames, downstream from London.
Benjamin West was a British-American artist who painted famous historical scenes such as The Death of Nelson, The Death of General Wolfe, the Treaty of Paris, and Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky.
Willem van de Velde the Younger was a Dutch marine painter, the son of Willem van de Velde the Elder, who also specialised in maritime art. His brother, Adriaen van de Velde, was a landscape painter.
Willem van de Velde the Elder was a Dutch Golden Age seascape painter, who produced many precise drawings of ships and ink paintings of fleets, but later learned to use oil paints like his son.
Mary "Moll" Davis, also spelt Davies or Davys, was a courtesan and mistress of King Charles II of England. She was an actress and entertainer before and during her role as royal mistress.
James II and VII was King of England and Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII from the death of his elder brother, Charles II, on 6 February 1685, until he was deposed in the 1688 Glorious Revolution. The last Catholic monarch of England, Scotland, and Ireland, his reign is now remembered primarily for conflicts over religion. However, it also involved struggles over the principles of absolutism and divine right of kings, with his deposition ending a century of political and civil strife by confirming the primacy of the English Parliament over the Crown.
The Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I of England is the name of any of three surviving versions of an allegorical panel painting depicting the Tudor queen surrounded by symbols of royal majesty against a backdrop representing the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.
The frigate Gloucester was a Speaker-class third rate, commissioned into the Royal Navy as HMS Gloucester after the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660. The ship was ordered in December 1652, built at Limehouse in East London, and launched in 1654. The warship was conveying James Stuart, Duke of York to Scotland, when on 6 May 1682 she struck a sandbank off the Norfolk coast, and quickly sank. The Duke was among those saved, but as many as 250 people drowned, including members of the royal party; it is thought that James's intransigence delayed the evacuation of the passengers and crew.
Isaac Sailmaker was an etcher and marine painter of the Baroque period, who had a long career in England. He was referred to in contemporary books and journals as "the father of British sea painting", but was eclipsed by his contemporaries, the Dutch marine painters Willem van de Velde the Elder and his son Willem van de Velde the Younger, who for a period dominated the London market. Sailmaker was commissioned by the English Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, to paint the English fleet at Fort-Mardyck.
Henri Gascar was a French painter who achieved artistic success in England during the reign of Charles II. He painted many leading ladies at court, including several of the King's mistresses, before returning to Paris. He subsequently relocated to Rome, where he died in 1701.
The Flagmen of Lowestoft are a collection of thirteen paintings by Sir Peter Lely, painted in the mid-1660s. They were originally part of the Royal Collections, though most were given to Greenwich Hospital in the nineteenth century, and are now in the National Maritime Museum in London. The paintings are of prominent naval officers, most of them of flag rank, who had fought at the Battle of Lowestoft in 1665. Lely at the time was Principal Painter to King Charles II.
Admiral Sir James Wishart (1659–1723) was a Scottish admiral in the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament (MP) for Portsmouth. Wishart served at the Battle of Cadiz and the Battle of Vigo Bay in 1702 and at the Capture of Gibraltar.
George Webster was a 19th-century British Marine Art painter. He toured extensively and painted seascapes of the places he visited. His work was exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists and the Royal Academy.
George Henry Hodgson was an English Royal Navy officer and polar explorer. He fought in the First Opium War (1839-1842) where he distinguished himself in combat. He later served under Captain Francis Crozier as Second Lieutenant aboard HMS Terror on the 1845 Franklin Expedition, which sought to chart unexplored areas of the Canadian Arctic, find the Northwest Passage, and carry out scientific observations. All personnel of the expedition, including Hodgson, perished in what is now Nunavut, Canada.
Portrait of Augustus Keppel is a 1749 portrait painting by the English artist Joshua Reynolds and depicting the British naval officer Augustus Keppel. The two men met the same year at the artist accompanied Keppel on an expedition to the Mediterranean. He sat for Reynolds at Port Mahon and Minorca is depicted in the background. Visible on the right is a squadron of Royal Navy ships led by the Centurion. In contrast to the more epic style Reynolds would later use for military figures, Keppel is portrayed as "upstanding and admirable, but he is hardly a transcendent hero".
