Leonard Knyff or Leendert Knijff (10 August 1650, Haarlem - April 1722, London) was a Dutch draughtsman and painter. He was the son of landscape painter Wouter Knijff and the brother of Jacob Knijff and left around 1681 from Holland to England.Leonard Knijff
at the

RKD The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center i ...

Knyff collaborated with Kip to produce views of country houses and gardens for ''Britannia Illustrata'' and ''Le Nouveau Théâtre''. The topographical images of Kip and Knyff are significant for providing reliable illustrations of the development of the formal English garden in the Dutch-French style. Their documentary information for this period in British architecture and landscape design is particularly valued because, within a generation, the formal gardens seen in these views would be swept away in favor of the pastoral compositions, derived from idealized landscapes of painters such as Claude Lorrain, that characterize the "naturalistic"

English landscape garden The English landscape garden, also called English landscape park or simply the English garden (french: Jardin à l'anglaise, it, Giardino all'inglese, german: Englischer Landschaftsgarten, pt, Jardim inglês, es, Jardín inglés), is a sty ...

s. In the later 20th century many of the Kip and Knyff views were hand-coloured, as monochrome landscapes proved increasingly harder to sell in the market.

Biography

He was born in Haarlem as the son of the painter Wouter Knijff, where he received his training as an artist.Leonard Knijff
in the

He moved to London around 1681 and though he returned to the Netherlands on trips, he stayed in London until he died. He is known for paintings, drawings, and art auctions. He collaborated with

Jan Kip Johannes "Jan" Kip (1652/53, Amsterdam – 1722, Westminster) was a Dutch draftsman, engraver and print dealer. Together with Leonard Knyff, he made a speciality of engraved views of English country houses. Life Kip was a pupil of Bastiaen St ...

on a series of engravings of English country houses. His brother Jacob Knijff was a marine painter.

Link to Jan Kip

The inexorably linked careers of Leonard Knijff and

trace a specialty of engraved views of English country houses, represented in minute detail from the bird's-eye view that was a long-established pictorial convention for

topography Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the land forms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps. Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary sc ...

. Their major work was ''Britannia Illustrata: Or Views of Several of the Queens Palaces, as Also of the Principal seats of the Nobility and Gentry of Great Britain, Curiously Engraven on 80 Copper Plates,'' London (1707, published in the winter of 1708 – 09). The volume is among the most important English topographical publications of the 18th century. Architecture is rendered with great care and detail, and the settings of

parterre A ''parterre'' is a part of a formal garden constructed on a level substrate, consisting of symmetrical patterns, made up by plant beds, low hedges or coloured gravels, which are separated and connected by paths. Typically it was the part of ...

s and radiating avenues driven through woods or planted across fields, garden paths gates and toolsheds are illustrated with meticulous detail, and amusingly staffed with figures and horses, coaches pulling into forecourts, water-craft on rivers, filled with the delight native to the

Low Countries The term Low Countries, also known as the Low Lands ( nl, de Lage Landen, french: les Pays-Bas, lb, déi Niddereg Lännereien) and historically called the Netherlands ( nl, de Nederlanden), Flanders, or Belgica, is a coastal lowland region in N ...

' traditions. Some of the plates are maps, in the Siennese "map perspective," a feat of imagination in a world that had not conceived even of a balloon ascension.

References

*
Leonard Knijff
on Artnet
Prints from Britannia Illustrata
SG-CHEM Antique Prints

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Knijff, Leonard 1650 births 1722 deaths Dutch Golden Age painters Dutch male painters Artists from Haarlem Painters from London Dutch expatriates in England