Prominent Members
Amongst the Club's membership were writers such as William Congreve, Sir John Vanbrugh, and Joseph Addison, and politicians including Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Burlington, Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, The Earl of Stanhope, Viscount Cobham, Abraham Stanyan and Sir Robert Walpole.
Other notables included Garth, Steele, and the Dukes of Grafton, Devonshire, Kingston, Richmond, Manchester, Dorset and Newcastle, and Lords Sunderland and Wharton. Of some notoriety were Lord Mohun and the Earl of Berkeley. The artist Sir Godfrey Kneller was also a member, his 48 portraits in a standard "kit-cat" format of 36 by 28 inches, painted over more than twenty years, form the most complete known members list of the club. Many of these portraits currently hang in galleries created in a partnership between the National Portrait Gallery and the National Trust at Beningbrough Hall in Yorkshire.
Read more about this topic: Kit-Cat Club
Famous quotes containing the words prominent and/or members:
“The vain man does not wish so much to be prominent as to feel himself prominent; he therefore disdains none of the expedients for self-deception and self-outwitting. It is not the opinion of others that he sets his heart on, but his opinion of their opinion.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900)
“A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists, all powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death.”
—Ernest Hemingway (18991961)