Self-Portrait with Husband and Son, late 1650s
This is the earliest recorded self-portrait by Mary Beale and serves to express her extraordinary contribution to British art. Her pose embraces the established language of male self-portraiture, with her inwardly directed hand gesture and subtly turned pose. Her authority as the artist is accentuated by direct eye contact with the viewer and a defining background sweep of drapery. Her young son, and affectionately gazing husband, reflect the intricate balance she maintained between artist, wife and mother.
Charles Beale (1631-1705), late 1650s
This intimate portrait of Charles, donning an elaborate fur hat, is one of Beale’s earliest surviving works. It records a seminal moment in the careers of both husband and wife: Beale as a respected painter of portraits and Charles as a clerk in the patents office. The Beales were collaborators in art, life, and business, as richly evidenced in diaries, letters, poems, and tender portraits, such as this exquisite example.
Portrait of Anne Sotheby (née Robinson) (1657-1727), 1677
Assisted by her son Charles, this portrait offers an insight into the division of labour within Beale’s studio. Beale herself took on the complex elements of the composition, such as the face and background landscape, and directed her son to paint the drapery - for which he was paid £1. The sitter is Anne Sotheby, the scion of an old English Family, and the painting is recorded in her husband’s notebook as ‘By Mrs Beal, The Picture of my Wife in her 20th year, a half-length. £14.50’. In the 1670s Beale charged £5 for a head and shoulders portrait and £10 for a halflength. The price of £14.50 therefore probably included additional charges for a frame and the expensive ultramarine (lapis lazuli) pigment in the blue drapery, for which Beale charged an additional fee.
Pall Mall Studio
Mary Beale’s studio was a model of efficiency and organisation. She often worked six days a week, spending long hours in her studio from morning until evening. Her output can be divided into three distinct categories: portraits done ‘for study and improvement’; ‘for friends and in return for kindness’; and ‘for profit’. This was meticulously documented by her husband Charles in a series of notebooks, some of which survive. His remarkable notes and observations, in original and transcribed form, make her the best-documented artist of the seventeenth century.
A Young Boy seated in a Landscape, 1680s
The young sitter in this portrait was likely part of Beale’s close circle of ecclesiastical patrons. He is presented with attributes of St John the Baptist, including a crook and a lamb, gesturing to a steepled church in the distant landscape. Beale’s circles of friends included clergymen and each year, she paid 10% of her income from each portrait into a ‘Pious and Charitable Account’. This work stands out for its expressive freedom; the composition is ambitious yet not overly ostentatious and may well have appealed to a Church patron.
