Kit-Cat Club - Prominent Members

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.

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