Richard Boyle, 2nd Viscount Shannon

This portraitback to top

The Kit-Cat Club portrait. It is not known why the portrait was left incomplete. As it is it remains a remarkable demonstration of Kneller’s technique, showing the face modelled with the composition faintly suggested. Piper observed that ‘it may well be that little more than the head of many of the Kit-Cat portraits were painted by Kneller himself, the remainder being handed over to studio assistants’. It was not hung with the other kit-cats at Barn Elms, presumably because it was unfinished.
The only other image of Shannon is the posthumous monument by Roubiliac in St Mary, Walton-on-Thames, [1] a whole-length figure surrounded by emblems of war.

Footnotesback to top

1) Illus. D. Bindman & M. Baker, Roubiliac and the eighteenth-century Monument, 1995, pl.x, and see pp 136-41.

Referenceback to top

Piper 1963
D. Piper, Catalogue of the Seventeenth Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery 1625-1714, 1963, p 314.

Stewart 1983
J. D. Stewart, Godfrey Kneller, 1983, no.667 as c.1710.

Exhibitionsback to top

Beningbrough 2006–.

Reproductionsback to top

J. Faber II 1733 (J. Chaloner Smith, British Mezzotinto Portraits, 208/27).


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