Sir Peter Lely’s work feels like a high budget episode of Girls Gone Wild, or clubbing with Tara Reid on fancy-dress night. 

Lely was lucky to peak in an era that didn’t begrudge aristocratic women a wardrobe malfunction.  He was also lucky to arrive in England from Holland the same year as the death of reigning king of portraiture Anthony van Dyck, leaving an opening in the market. Always the opportunist, Lely stepped up and styled himself the most fashionable painter of the 17th century.

He liked to live large and was never above chasing the next big meal ticket.  He started out painting for the Court of King Charles I.  When Charles was beheaded by Oliver Cromwell’s regime, Lely changed sides to paint the new Puritan elite. Cromwell famously instructed Lely to paint him “warts and all.” In an era when even laughter was banned as too risqué, Lely privately painted erotic masterpieces like Nymphs by a Fountain (1650), revealing his true calling. When Cromwell fell and Charles II returned to the throne, Lely flip-flopped again to paint the Restoration court.  If Lely’s luxurious living tells us anything, it’s that Turncoats have full pockets.

In Charles II’s libertine court, Lely could finally stop painting old guy's skin tags and start painting young beauties’ exposed breasts, a task he seems to have enjoyed very much based on his sensual rendering of female sitters. His unclothed pin-up of Charles’ mistress Nell Gwyn (which the King kept hidden behind a landscape) would have been quite fun to paint. Lucrative, too. Knowing his business savvy, Lely probably charged by the nipple.

Lely’s factory-style production method predates 20^th-century commercial artists like Andy Warhol and Margaret Keane by centuries.  He kept a numbered catalogue of his poses, and delegated grunt work to assistants.  He saw the potential of printmaking to publicize and commercialize his work, and introduced mezzotint to Britain.  In consequence, he was the first British-active artist to amass an enormous body of work.  But critics comment on the mass-produced quality.  Brian Sewell remarks that, “…no sight is more aesthetically and intellectually numbing.”  Oh Brian, you sassy felly, you!

Women may have been more critical of his tendency to reverse-photoshop, adding the fashionable double chins and Roman noses to his female sitters, a la Sports Illustrated: Rubenesque Edition.  Yet he remained a prolific painter of women until his dying day. He dropped dead, palette literally in hand, while painting the Duchess of Somerset.