I've recently been looking at the art and culture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for book number three and have seen lots of mentions by historians of Peter Lely, Nicholas Hilliard and Anthony van Dyck. But one day I stumbled upon the name Mary Beale, and couldn't figure out why, as a lover of history and art history, I had only just discovered her.
Mary Beale was born in 1632 in Suffolk, the daughter of a clergyman named Cradock. Early on in her life she showed an aptitude for painting, and embarked on a career during the reign of Charles II.
Friends with the court artist Peter Lely, Mary's technique shows some similarities, as in her self-portrait where we see her looking down with heavy eyelids and wearing a satin gown.
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| St Edmundsbury Borough Council - Moyse's Hall Museum, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons |
Mary painted the portraits of a number of famous and influential seventeenth century people, including Dr John Tillotson and the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, Henry Cavendish and his wife, Frances. Cavendish was the great-grandson of Bess of Hardwick; his father was William Cavendish, an influential man in Restoration period arts and culture in his own right. She also painted a portrait of Charles II towards the end of his reign. More informally, Mary painted depictions of her artist husband Samuel and their son Bartholomew, showing a strong understanding of realism, light and shadow but also portraying emotion. She captured the fashion in portraiture of the time, living during the Baroque era when subjects were painted with billowing fabrics and swirling movement.
A resident of Pall Mall in London, Mary died in 1699 and was buried in St James Church, Piccadilly. A memorial in the church has been placed there in her honour, stating that her tomb was destroyed by bomb damage during the Second World War.
Mary lived during a very exciting time. Portraiture, a subject she clearly loved, was undergoing a change from the stiff, posed depictions of the Tudor and early Stuart years into something more realistic, relaxed and expressive. She was known to Peter Lely and biographers have also stated that Charles II encouraged her in her work, although I have been unable so far to find solid evidence of this. She lived through the Great Plague of 1665, the wars with the Dutch and the Fire of London in 1666. She would have been thirty-four when London glowed with flames and ashes floated from the sky. Mary is not often recognised but her work was extraordinary and she showed a natural ability to convey the attitude and appearance of the sitter.
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Notes and sources
Walter Sparrow, Women Painters of the World, Hodder and Stoughton, London. 1905.
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