Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun

Inscriptionback to top

Signed and dated, lower right: G. Kneller (GK in monogram).

This portraitback to top

The Kit-Cat Club portrait. The locket he holds has been said to show Mrs Bracegirdle, [1] which seems unlikely.

'The day Lord Mohun and the Earl of Berkeley were entered of [the Kit-Cat Club] Jacob [Tonson] said he saw they were just going to be ruined. When Lord Mohun broke down the gilded emblem on the top of his chair, Jacob complained to his friends, and said that a man who would do that would cut a man’s throat.' [2]
The only other known image of Mohun is a crude, anonymous mezzotint of his final duel with the 4th Duke of Hamilton. [3]

Footnotesback to top

1) Country Life, CXXXVI, 13 August 1964, p 396. To allow his friend Captain Richard Hill to carry off the actress Anne Bracegirdle, Mohun had been an accomplice to the murder of the actor William Mountfort in 1692.
2) Joseph Spence, Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters of Books and Men, collected from conversation, ed. J. M. Osborn, 1966, no.121.
3) J. Chaloner Smith, British Mezzotinto Portraits, p 1691, class II, no.49; illus. Macaulay’s History of Britain, ed. C. H. Firth, IV, 1914, p 2271.

Exhibitionsback to top

Second Special Exhibition of National Portraits ( ... William and Mary to MDCCC), South Kensington, 1867, no.123; Beningbrough 1978–.

Reproductionsback to top

J. Faber II 1732 (J. Chaloner Smith, British Mezzotinto Portraits, 208/23), inscribed G. Kneller Bart Pinxt 1707.


This extended catalogue entry is from the National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Later Stuart Portraits 1685–1714, National Portrait Gallery, 2009, and is as published then. For the most up-to-date details on individual Collection works, we recommend reading the information provided in the Search the Collection results on this website in parallel with this text.

View all known portraits for Sir Godfrey Kneller, Bt