It would seem as if the example of Vandyck and Lely and their great fame would have established the use of landscape as a portrait convention, and it is true that Lely’s pupils[569] made some attempts in this direction, but under the leadership of Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646–1723) the custom gradually fell into disuse. Kneller, practically supreme in England during the half-century before his death, painted the kings and queens and royal families of England, the beaux and the belles, the statesmen and the wits, so that a gallery of his portraits would afford a survey of the notable social and intellectual England of his day. Commissions came in upon him too rapidly to allow much time for carefully studied backgrounds. Sometimes he uses a rock background in the manner of Vandyck, but even more conventionalized, as in his “Madam Turner,”[570] and there is an occasional landscape in the manner of Lely, as in the “Countess of Ranelagh.”[571] The “Hampton Court Beauties,”[572] painted in emulation of the “Windsor Beauties,” are the portraits in which we should expect the richest use of landscape, and Kneller’s tall, elaborately gowned ladies, do stand in front of gardens with pillars and balustrades, with hints here and there of a red sunset, but not even the best of these backgrounds, that in the portrait of Lady Middleton with lamb and crook, has Lely’s grace and poetic suggestiveness. Now and then, when there is some reason to emphasize the portrait as a picture, Kneller brings all his ingenuity into play and crowds the canvas with decorative detail. The little duke of Gloucester, for instance, is rendered almost pathetically childish by his varied and elaborate surroundings,[573] but the combination of draped curtains, marble steps, massive pillars, a huge sculptured urn loaded with flowers, a balustraded terrace, and, beyond it, a park landscape under a cloudy sky, gives an impression of confused magnificence, with none of the artistic restraint of Vandyck, none of the elusive, romantic charm of Lely. After Kneller, Jervas (1675–1739), Richardson (1665–1745), Hudson (1701–79), and Highmore (1692–1780) were leaders in portrait painting. Jervas has occasional effects reminiscent of Lely as in the portraits of Dorothy Walpole and Mrs. Howard.[574] Hudson’s “Duchess of Ancaster,”[575] clad in the richest brocade, roped with pearls, stands stiffly erect in front of a rock that harks back to Vandyck. These pictures and others of their class well illustrate the wooden and unmeaning use of landscape characteristic of the mid-eighteenth century. Certain conventions from the great days of a century earlier still remained, but deprived of all charm or significance. With the successors of Kneller portrait painting reached the lowest point of the decline that had been steadily going on since Vandyck, or, at least, since Lely. Walpole, who had a high opinion of Kneller, said of his successors,