Mary Beale's Receives a Blue Plaque
This summer, Historic England installed Mary Beale's blue plaque at Allbrook Farmhouse, in Hampshire, where she lived with her husband and young family during the outbreak of plague in London. To mark the occasion, Historic England has produced a short film exploring Beale’s life and career featuring our gallery and a few of our works by Beale, including a recently sold self-portrait.
This is an exciting moment for the gallery, having researched Beale's work for many years. During the unveiling, Philip said, "Set aside, for a moment, Mary Beale’s near singularity as a woman artist in a male-dominated profession. What is most striking is the sheer industry of her portrait practice. Academics, divines, and a wide swathe of the professional middle classes and gentry were captured by her brush through a dynamic family enterprise, with Beale at its centre, her husband working behind the scenes, and her two sons helping to complete compositions. She did for this stratum of society what Sir Peter Lely did for the aristocracy."
The unveiling of this plaque marks an important moment in the continuing reassessment of Beale’s remarkable contribution to British art history.
