Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset

Inscriptionback to top

Signed, lower left, on ledge: GKneller (GK in monogram).

This portraitback to top

The Kit-Cat Club portrait. Somerset was the first member of the Club to present Tonson with his portrait [1] and he may have helped with the production of Faber’s mezzotints. A drawing of the head, reversed, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Dyce 376). [2]

Footnotesback to top

1) The title page of Faber’s volume of engravings (which was dedicated to Somerset) declared that it was he who had set ‘the Example to the other Members of the Kit-Cat Club of honouring Mr Tonson with their Pictures …’.
2) Formerly attributed to Kneller, but rejected by J. D. Stewart, Godfrey Kneller, 1983, D99.

Referenceback to top

Piper 1963
D. Piper, Catalogue of the Seventeenth Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery 1625-1714, 1963, p 323.

Stewart 1983
J. D. Stewart, Godfrey Kneller, 1983, no.686 as c.1703.

Reproductionsback to top

J. Simon (J. Chaloner Smith, British Mezzotinto Portraits, 136, reversed); J. Faber I 1714 (J. Chaloner Smith, British Mezzotinto Portraits, 34);¹ J. Faber II 1733 (J. Chaloner Smith, British Mezzotinto Portraits, 208/2) showing a lesser George attached to a ribbon behind his right elbow.

¹ From the set of Founders of Oxford and Cambridge Colleges; the image similar to J. Chaloner Smith, British Mezzotinto Portraits, 208/2 but smaller.


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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