Mary Beale (26 March 1633–1699) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 portrait painter. She became one of the most important portrait painters of 17th century England, and has been described as the first professional female English painter.

Life and work

Beale was born in Barrow, Suffolk

Barrow, Suffolk

-External links:Hidden East Anglia:Landscape Legends of Norfolk & Suffolk http://www.hiddenea.com/suffolkb.htm...

, the daughter of John Cradock, a Puritan

Puritan

The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...

 rector

Rector

The word rector has a number of different meanings; it is widely used to refer to an academic, religious or political administrator...

. Her mother, Dorothy, died when she was 10. Her father was an amateur painter, and member of the Painter-Stainers' Company

Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers

The Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. An organisation of stainers, or painters of metals and wood, is known to have existed as early as 1268. A similar organisation of painters, who generally worked on cloth, existed as early as 1283...

, and she was acquainted with local artists, such as Nathaniel Thach, Matthew Snelling, Robert Walker

Robert Walker (painter)

Robert Walker was an English portrait painter, notable for his portraits of the "Lord Protector" Oliver Cromwell and other distinguished parliamentarians of the period...

 and Peter Lely

Peter Lely

Sir Peter Lely was a painter of Dutch origin, whose career was nearly all spent in England, where he became the dominant portrait painter to the court.-Life:...

. In 1652, at the age of 18, she married Charles Beale, a cloth merchant from London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 - also an amateur painter.

She became a semi-professional portrait painter in the 1650s and 1660s, working from her home, first in Covent Garden

Covent Garden

Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...

 and later in Fleet Street

Fleet Street

Fleet Street is a street in central London, United Kingdom, named after the River Fleet, a stream that now flows underground. It was the home of the British press until the 1980s...

.

The family moved to a farmhouse in Allbrook

Allbrook

Allbrook is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Eastleigh in Hampshire, England....

, Hampshire

Hampshire

Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...

 in 1665 due to financial difficulties, her husband having lost his position as a patent clerk

Patent clerk

A patent examiner is an employee, usually a civil servant, working at a patent office. Major employers of patent examiners are the European Patent Office , the United States Patent and Trademark Office and the Japan Patent Office.-Duties:Patent examiners review patent applications to determine...

, and also due to the Great Plague of London

Great Plague of London

The Great Plague was a massive outbreak of disease in the Kingdom of England that killed an estimated 100,000 people, 20% of London's population. The disease is identified as bubonic plague, an infection by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted through a flea vector...

. For the next five years, a 17th-century two storey timber-framed building was her family home and studio. She returned to London in 1670, where she established a studio

Studio

A studio is an artist's or worker's workroom, or the catchall term for an artist and his or her employees who work within that studio. This can be for the purpose of architecture, painting, pottery , sculpture, scrapbooking, photography, graphic design, filmmaking, animation, radio or television...

 in Pall Mall

Pall Mall, London

Pall Mall is a street in the City of Westminster, London, and parallel to The Mall, from St. James's Street across Waterloo Place to the Haymarket; while Pall Mall East continues into Trafalgar Square. The street is a major thoroughfare in the St James's area of London, and a section of the...

, with her husband working as her assistant, mixing her paints and keeping her accounts. She became successful, and her circle of friends included Thomas Flatman

Thomas Flatman

Thomas Flatman was an English poet and miniature painter. There were several editions of his Poems and Songs . One of his self-portraits is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. A portrait of Charles II is in the Wallace Collection, London...

, poet Samuel Woodford, the Archbishop of Canterbury

Archbishop of Canterbury

The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. In his role as head of the Anglican Communion, the archbishop leads the third largest group...

 John Tillotson

John Tillotson

John Tillotson was an Archbishop of Canterbury .-Curate and rector:Tillotson was the son of a Puritan clothier at Haughend, Sowerby, Yorkshire. He entered as a pensioner of Clare Hall, Cambridge, in 1647, graduated in 1650 and was made fellow of his college in 1651...

, and Bishop

Bishop

A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...

s Edward Stillingfleet

Edward Stillingfleet

Edward Stillingfleet was a British theologian and scholar. Considered an outstanding preacher as well as a strong polemical writer defending Anglicanism, Stillingfleet was known as "the beauty of holiness" for his good looks in the pulpit, and was called by John Hough "the ablest man of his...

 and Gilbert Burnet

Gilbert Burnet

Gilbert Burnet was a Scottish theologian and historian, and Bishop of Salisbury. He was fluent in Dutch, French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Burnet was respected as a cleric, a preacher, and an academic, as well as a writer and historian...

. She became reacquainted with Peter Lely

Peter Lely

Sir Peter Lely was a painter of Dutch origin, whose career was nearly all spent in England, where he became the dominant portrait painter to the court.-Life:...

, now Court Artist to Charles II

Charles II of England

Charles II was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.Charles II's father, King Charles I, was executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War...

. Her later work is heavily influenced by Lely, being mainly small portraits or copies of Lely's work. Her work became unfashionable after his death in 1680.

Mary Beale died in 1699 in Pall Mall, and was buried at St. James's, Piccadilly in London. Her husband died in 1705.
Of her children, a son, Bartholomew, died young. A second son, also called Bartholomew, painted portraits before taking up medicine. A third son, named Charles after his father, was also a painter, specialising mainly in miniature

Miniature (illuminated manuscript)

The word miniature, derived from the Latin minium, red lead, is a picture in an ancient or medieval illuminated manuscript; the simple decoration of the early codices having been miniated or delineated with that pigment...

s.

Further reading

• Barber, Tabitha. Mary Beale (1632/3-1699): Portrait of a seventeenth-century painter, her family and her studio (Geffrye Museum Trust, 1999)

External links

• Mary Beale online (ArtCyclopedia)
• Mary Beale Trust (Campaign to save, conserve and repair Mary Beale's Hampshire home, Allbrook Farmhouse and its historic smallholding)
• Paintings by Mary Beale (National Portrait Gallery, London)
• Mary Beale self-portrait (National Portrait Gallery)
• http://www.stedmundsbury.gov.uk/sebc/visit/paintings-prints.cfm St Edmundsbury Heritage Service Bury St Edmunds holds a large public collection.
• Mary Beale exhibition (Geffrye Museum
  Geffrye Museum
  Founded in 1914, the Geffrye Museum is a museum specialising in the history of the English domestic interior. Named after Sir Robert Geffrye, former Lord Mayor of London and Master of the Ironmongers' Company, it is located on Kingsland Road in London...
  
  , London)