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Rh painter's: but, Lord! the difference that is between their two works!’ Again, on 20 Oct. 1662: ‘With Commissioner Pett to Mr. Lilly's, the great painter, who came forth to us; but believing that I came to bespeak a picture, he prevented it by telling us that he should not be at leisure these three weeks, which methinks is a rare thing. And then to see in what pomp his table was laid for himself to go to dinner; and here, among other pictures, saw the so much desired by me picture of my Lady Castlemaine, which is a most blessed picture; and one that I must have a copy of.’ Later on Pepys describes Lely as ‘a mighty proud man’ and ‘full of state.’

Lely is famous for his portraits of the fair and frail beauties of Charles II's court, and though freely criticised for want of taste, his portraits have maintained their popularity to the present time. Pope celebrates ‘the sleepy eye that spoke the melting soul,’ the ‘nightgown fastened by a single pin,’ and other characteristics of Lely's portraits; still, it is the voluptuous and at the same time expressive features and attitudes of Nell Gwynn, Mrs. Middleton, and other beauties, as depicted by Lely, and now at Hampton Court and elsewhere, which have done much to condone in the eyes of posterity the excesses and immoralities of Charles II's court. His famous series of ‘Beauties,’ originally at Windsor Castle, but now at Hampton Court, was executed for the Duchess of York. Every lady in England expected to be painted in the same manner, and there is hardly a family mansion in England which does not possess some portrait bearing Lely's name. His male portraits have been less appreciated than those of his lady sitters, though his best work may be found in some of them. After the naval victory at Solebay in 1665, the Duke of York commissioned Lely to paint portraits of the admirals and commanders in the engagement. Pepys again records on 18 April 1666: ‘To Mr. Lilly, the painter's; and there saw the heads, some finished, and all began, of the flaggmen in the late great fight with the Duke of York against the Dutch. The Duke of York hath them done to hang in his chamber, and very finely they are done indeed;’ and on 18 July the diarist accompanied Vice-admiral Sir W. Penn to the painter's house, but ‘so full of work Lilly is, that he was fain to take his table-book out to see how his time is appointed, and appointed six days hence for him to come between seven and eight in the morning.’ It would be impossible to enumerate the portraits painted by Lely or under his direction. Besides the twenty at Hampton Court, there are numerous examples in the National Portrait Gallery. He sometimes painted subject-pieces, but usually introduced his sitters as a ‘Magdalene’ or some goddess, or groups of children as cupids and bacchanals. At Knole there is a curious painting of nude figures, representing Charles II, as a shepherd, discovering a group of nymphs. Lely might have succeeded had he devoted himself to landscape-painting. Like other fashionable portrait-painters, he kept a number of assistants, among them P. H. Lankrink, J. B. Gaspars, Uylenburg, Roestraten, and others to paint the draperies and accessories in his pictures. His favourite pupils were John Greenhill [q. v.] and Mary Beale [q. v.]; from the notebooks of the latter's husband Vertue copied some interesting details as to Lely's method of painting. Later in life he met with rivals, such as James Huysmans, Henri Gascar, Simon Verelst, John Hayls, and others; but his supremacy remained unshaken until the arrival of Godfrey Kneller, with whom he was brought into immediate rivalry [see under ]. It can hardly be doubted that Lely, who fully appreciated Kneller's merits, was greatly affected by Kneller's rapid success. Lely was knighted by the king at Whitehall on 11 Jan. 1679, and received a grant of arms, ‘Argent on a chevron between three roses gules, leaved and seeded proper, a mullet or.’ In spite of failing health he continued painting to the last. On the morning of 30 Nov. 1680 Sarah, dowager-duchess of Somerset, arrived at his house in Covent Garden for a sitting, and found that the painter had died suddenly that morning. He was buried by torchlight on 7 Dec. in St. Paul's, Covent Garden, where a monument was erected to his memory, containing a bust by Grinling Gibbons and an inscription by Thomas Flatman. Besides his house in Covent Garden Lely also had one at Kew, where he resided during the summer months, and he purchased an estate at Willingham in Lincolnshire. Most of the contemporary writers in prose and verse composed panegyrics on Lely's paintings.

Though Lely amassed a large fortune, he was lavish in expenditure and neglectful of business. He had a magnificent collection of pictures, including several by Vandyck, the catalogue of which was printed by Batho, and a still more remarkable collection of drawings by the old masters, many of which he had acquired at the sale of the Earl of Arundel's collection. In his will, dated 4 Feb. 1679 (printed in full in ‘Wills from Doctors' Commons,’ Camd. Soc.), he appointed Roger North (d. 1734) [q. v.], with whom as with his brothers he was on terms of great intimacy, one of his executors and guardian of his children. His estate in Lincolnshire