Sir Christopher Wren

Inscriptionback to top

Inscribed top left: SIR CHR:WREN/Late Surveyor General of/the Royal Buildings./He died the 25th of Feby:1723, aged 91, and bottom right: G. Kneller p.1711; signed, centre left: G Kneller Eques/ … 1711.

This portraitback to top

Showing Wren at the age of seventy-nine in the year St Paul’s was completed. Copies are at All Souls College, Oxford, [1] in St Paul’s Deanery, [2] and in the Chelsea Royal Hospital by G. P. Jacomb Hood c.1920 from the Government Art Collection; another was sold Christie’s, 10 July 1914, lot 25.

Footnotesback to top

1) Mrs R. L. Poole, Catalogue of Portraits in the possession of the University, Colleges, City and County of Oxford, II, p 187, no.25.
2) Illus. L. Weaver, Sir Christopher Wren, 1923, pl.xiv.

Referenceback to top

Piper 1963
D. Piper, Catalogue of the Seventeenth Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery 1625-1714, 1963, p 386.

Stewart 1983
J. D. Stewart, Godfrey Kneller, 1983, no.867.

Provenanceback to top

The Earl of Bessborough by 1785;¹ the 5th Earl of Bessborough sale, Christie’s, 10-11 July 1850, 2nd day, lot 137, bought B. S. White; J. Mathews, Birmingham; purchased 1860.

¹ When listed by the 2nd Earl of Bessborough (1704-93) at Roehampton (Sir William Musgrave, MS lists of portraits, British Museum, Add. MSS 6391, f.199r, no.8 as Sr.Christ.Wren - by Kneller 1723.Aet71). In the Bessborough sale, 5-7 February 1801, lot 34 was a head of Wren by Kneller.

Exhibitionsback to top

Sir Christopher Wren, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1982, no.I:4.


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.

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