Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1st Baronet (born Gottfried Kniller; 8 August 1646 – 19 October 1723) was a German-born British painter.

Kneller also painted scientists such as Isaac Newton, foreign monarchs such as Louis XIV of France and visitors to England such as Michael Shen Fu-Tsung.

[1] Kneller studied in Leiden, but became a pupil of Ferdinand Bol and Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn in Amsterdam.

He then travelled with his brother John Zacharias Kneller, who was an ornamental painter, to Rome and Venice in the early 1670s, painting historical subjects and portraits in the studio of Carlo Maratti, and later moved to Hamburg.

In the spirit of enterprise, he founded a studio which churned out portraits on an almost industrial scale, relying on a brief sketch of the face with details added to a formulaic model, aided by the fashion for gentlemen to wear full wigs.

When Sir Peter Lely died in 1680, Kneller was jointly appointed Principal Painter in Ordinary with John Riley to the Crown by Charles II.

[1] Created a baronet by King George I on 24 May 1715,[1] he was also head of the Kneller Academy of Painting and Drawing from 1711 until 1716 in Great Queen Street, London, which counted such artists as Thomas Gibson amongst its founding directors.

His paintings were praised by Whig members including John Dryden, Joseph Addison,[8] Richard Steele, and Alexander Pope.

He had been a churchwarden at St Mary's, Twickenham, when the 14th-century nave collapsed in 1713 and was active in the plans for the church's reconstruction by John James.

A portrait of Queen Anne that belongs to Trinity Hospital in Retford, Nottinghamshire has been attributed to Kneller by the auctioneers Phillips – though it is unsigned.