Mary Beale
(1632 - 1697) |
|
Teaching, Portraiture Art Work
| Name: |
Mary Beale |
| Gender: |
Unknown |
| Place of Birth: |
England |
| Nationality: |
|
| Birth: |
1632 |
| Death: |
1697 |
| Website: |
|
| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
|
|
Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Teaching, Portraiture |
| Medium: |
|
| Method: |
|
| Style: |
Baroque-era |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painter
|
|
|
Biography
On 27 April 1681 Mary Beale's husband, Charles, recorded the successful outcome of a portrait sitting: 'This day my Dearest Heart finisht ye face of our most worthy friend Dr Tillotson Dean of Canterbury, upon a 3 qtr Sacking and has made it extreamly like him and colored it exceeding rarely & made it very forcible and strong. She bestowed the whole day upon it, & the most obliging Dean satt with admirable and unvariable patience being one of the readiest persons in this world to gratify, & serve his friende.'
Charles Beale's surviving notebooks and journals give us a glimpse through the studio door of an artist who was, by 1671, working successfully as a portrait painter in London's fashionable Pall Mall. Although nothing is known of Beale's training, her father was an amateur artist and miniature painter. He, and then Beale herself and her husband (also an amateur artist), were all painted by Sir Peter Lely, and owned a self-portrait by him. Lely later advised Beale on her work, and lent her his paintings to copy. She could also study from her family's collection, which included works by Rubens and Van Dyck. Charles Beale wrote of family visits to view portraits by other artists: 'My D. Heart, sself and Son Charles saw at de Waltons in Lincolns Inn Fields ye Lady Caernarvons pict a H.L done by Sir Ant Van Dyck, in blew Sattin, a most rare faire complexion exceeding fleshy, done almost without any shadow... Also a rare head done by Holbin of ye Lord Cromwell.'
Among the subjects of Beale's paintings were men such as Edward Stillingfleet, later Dean of St Paul's and Bishop of Worcester, Gilbert Burnet, author of History of the Reformation, and Dr Thomas Sydenham, whose portrait by Beale is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London. The society figures she painted included Lady Leigh, whom she portrayed as a shepherdess, and Catherine Thynne, Lady Lowther. Both paintings relied upon poses and compositions that Beale had studied in Lely's work, and she found a useful source of income in making copies of portraits, the originals often by Lely, for such ladies to give to each other as gifts.
Beale also celebrated her friendships, and her companionable marriage would have been included in this definition, in her work. She painted her family, portraits of herself with her husband and son, and members of their circle. She wrote of the profound moral and religious importance of these close ties in her Discourse on Friendship of 1666/7, which reflected widely heid contemporary beliefs, as Tabitha Barber has discussed in her catalogue of the exhibition of Beale's art held at the Geffrye Museum. London (1999-2000). As to the question of her position as a woman within the family, according to Barber, 'Mary would never wish to assert her superior role as artist and breadwinner', believing in obedience to her husband's wishes, as was common at the time. Although we may assume that her career as a woman artist was somewhat radical, this must be balanced by Beale's own beliefs, and by the fact that she gained the patronage of establishment figures, clergymen and the aristocracy. And although she may have been unusual. Beale was not unique in being a successful female artist during the late seventeenth century, Another portrait painter in oils, Joan Carlile, received the recognition of royal patronage.
Beale used her studio assistants, at least two of whom were women, as models for paintings in which she experimented with portrait compositions and techniques. Portrait of a Young Girl is likely to be such a work. Charles Beale was involved in the technical operation of the studio, making pigments for his wife to use and for sale. His notes contain lists of 'Pictures done by my Deare Heart upon account of Study and Improvemt'. Among them he describes Miss Woodfords pict upon ye onion bag was done over before she finisht it, with white poppy oils, as thin done over as she could qu: how it settles.'' Beale's self-portraits can also be understood as test pieces, and as advertisements. They sometimes emphatically represent her as an artist. She showed herself holding a palette (c.1670-5, St Edmundsbury Borough Council) or with her hand resting on a canvas on which there is an unfinished portrait of her two sons (c.1665-6, National Portrait Gallery, London), perhaps a visual metaphor for her role as a mother, bringing her children into existence on canvas as in life. Beale trained her son Charles, and her
assistants. One of these, Sarah Curtis, had some success, and her portrait of
her husband Benjamin Hoadly, Bishop of Salisbury, is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London. Charles Beale's diary for 4 June 1681 suggests the burgeoning ambition of another, Keaty Trioche; he recorded her purchase of half an ounce of one of the most expensive pigments, ultramarine.
Beale was buried in Sir Christopher Wren's St James's Church, Piccadilly, not
far from her Pall Mall studio, although no monument to her has survived. But her home and studio in the country has been rediscovered. Beale took her family to Allbrook Farmhouse near Eastleigh, Hampshire, to escape the plague in the 1660s. Three centuries later, in the 1950s. inhabitants of the house found her racks for storing canvases still in place.
|
Samples of Work
|
|
