AFA Summer 2020

2020 Antiques & Fine Art 91 This exhibition opened in February 2020 at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, one of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, Williamsburg, Virginia. Temporarily closed to the public after the COVID-19 restrictions, visit www.colonialwilliamsburg.org for details on when the Art Museums will reopen. The exhibition was generously funded by Don and Elaine Bogus. Ronald L. Hurst is vice president for museums, preservation, and historic resources and the Carlisle H. Humelsine chief curator at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Virginia. Margaret Beck Pritchard, is deputy chief curator at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Virginia. Portrait of Daniel Parke II, attributed to Sir Godfrey Kneller, London, England, ca. 1704. Oil on canvas. Museum Purchase (1990-245, A&B). Born into a wealthy Virginia family, Daniel Parke’s (1664–1710) political and military aspirations led him to England as a young man. He found fame at the conclusion of the 1704 Battle of Blenheim in Germany. Handsome and popular, Parke was chosen by the Duke of Marlborough to carry word of England’s victory back to Queen Anne. Elated by the news, she presented Parke with a miniature portrait of herself, which appears on a ribbon around his neck in this painting and in all other known likenesses of him. Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646– 1723) depicted Parke heroically dressed in field armor, holding the baton of command, and with the Battle of Blenheim raging in the background. The gifted Kneller was one of England’s leading portrait painters during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He served as court painter to both Charles II and George I.