John Dryden (1631-1700), poet, was the eldest of the fourteen children of Erasmus Dryden (c. 1602-1654), and his wife, Mary Pickering (d. 1676). In 1663, he married Lady Elizabeth Howard (c. 1638-1714), by whom he had thee sons; Charles, John and Erasmus-Henry. The most popular poet and literary critic of the Restoration era, Dryden also wrote plays once the theatres had been re-opened by King Charles II, leading the way in Restoration comedy with Marriage à la Mode (1672). He established the heroic couplet as a poetic form and was later created Poet Laureate. After his conversion to Catholicism during the 1680s, he refused to pledge allegiance to William and Mary after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and fell out of favour at court. However, on his death he was still greatly mourned by the literati of the day.
Dryden was painted twice by Sir Godfrey Kneller, Bt. (1646-1723), first in 1693 (now in the National Portrait Gallery, inv. no. 2083), and secondly in 1698, as part of a series of portraits of members of the Kit-Cat Club, painted for the publisher Jacob Tonson, most of which were subsequently displayed at Barn Elms and Bayfordbury Hall, Hertfordshire. In both portraits, Dryden is depicted holding a laurel crown, although he was no longer Poet Laureate. The later work by Kneller was copied extensively by engravers and artists, such as George Vertue (1684-1756). Vertue was a prodigious engraver and print maker, specialising in the early part of his career in engravings after Kneller's paintings. A number of his engravings of Dryden, after Kneller, survive in the National Portrait Gallery (for example, inv. no. D30 122). Another miniature by Vertue, signed, of William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, was sold Christie's, London, 6 November 2001, lot 23.