Mary Beale

With Thomas Agnew and Sons, London, 1925;

By whom sold, London, Christie's, 9 February 1925, lot 50 (as Peter Lely), to Lee;

Private collection, Sweden;

Anonymous sale, Sweden, Uppsala Auktionskammare, 1 December 2015, lot 26 (as Peter Lely);

With Isherwood Fine Art, Bath;

From whom acquired by the present owner.

P. Hunting, My Dearest Heart: The Artist Mary Beale (1633–1699), London 2019, pp. 11, 18 and 102, reproduced in colour.

Mary Beale (1633–1699) was one of the most accomplished portrait painters of seventeenth century England, remarkable both for the quality of her work and for sustaining a professional studio at a time when women rarely practised art independently. Born in Suffolk, she was taught to paint by her father, John Cradock (d. 1652), a clergyman who was an amateur artist himself. She married Charles Beale (1631–1705) at the age of eighteen, and the couple moved to London where Mary began to paint professionally. By 1658, her growing renown as an artist was clear, as she was referenced in Sir William Sanderson’s Graphice: The Use of the Pen and Pencil, or The Most Excellent Art of Painting, as one of four women artist working in ‘Oly Colours.’ By the 1670s, she had established a thriving practice in London and was her family’s main source of income. Her husband left his position in the civil service to act as her studio manager, and he meticulously recorded her sitters, methods and materials; the survival of these documents provides one of the most valuable accounts of an artist’s workshop in the Restoration period.

Self-portraiture occupied a central place in Beale’s œuvre, who employed this genre to assert both her professional and personal identity. She depicted herself on several occasions, most famously in a work of circa 1666 in the National Portrait Gallery, London, in which she is holding an unfinished sketch of her two sons Bartholomew (1656–1709) and Charles (1660–1714?), while her artist’s palette hangs behind her.¹ 

In the present work, dating to circa 1680, Beale presents herself in a more formal fashion, half-length, her head turned slightly towards the viewer. The unusually formal composition, which employs the oval surround simulating carved stonework found in many of her portraits, suggests that it may have been the result of a specific commission. Her likeness compares closely to a self-portrait of 1681 in a private collection.²

Other instances of Beale’s inclusion of a decorative oval in her family portraits include a portrait of her husband dating to the same period last recorded with Philip Mould & Co., London.³

¹ Inv. no. NPG 1687; oil on canvas, 109.2 x 87.6 cm.; https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw00422/Mary-Beale

² T. Barber, Mary Beale (1632/3–1699). Portrait of a seventeenth-century painter, her family and her studio, exh. cat., London 1999–2000, p. 50, fig. 38, reproduced in colour.

³ Oil on canvas. 76.2 x 63.5 cm.; https://philipmould.com/artists/45-mary-beale/works/6135-mary-beale-charles-beale/