Mary Beale

One of the first women to work as a professional artist in Britain and, in 1663, became the first woman we know of to write about art by publishing Observations by MB, her 250-word directive for how to best paint apricots. Not only did this make her one of the first women to write about art, but it also made her the author of one of the earliest pieces of writing about art techniques to have been published in England.

Born Mary Craddock, her father was an amateur painter who taught his daughter to paint. This would be the only training she would ever receive, preferring to practice by copying the work of her contemporaries, particularly Peter Lely, as well as Italian and Dutch Golden Age Masters rather than attending any formal education or joining a guild. Lely frequently lent his paintings for Beale to copy and took great interest in her work and frequently commending her talent.

After marrying Charles Beale, a cloth and paint merchant and amateur artist, he managed the financial and business aspects of her career, later acting as her studio assistant and taking responsibility for mixing her paints, preparing her canvases, keeping her accounts and running the household – a rarity at the time. Alleviated of these traditionally ‘female duties’, Beale was able to focus entirely on her art and gained immense popularity in her lifetime – in 1677 alone she received more than eighty commissions.

Known for her Baroque style, she possessed prodigious skills as a painter and an unmatched technical virtuosity as a colourist, skills she commanded with ease to create her illusions of lustrous jewels, glossy textiles and delicate lace.

In an era of intractable obstructions to women’s freedoms and autonomy, economic and political as well as artistic, the arc of Beale’s career from amateur painter to highly successful professional portraitist is a remarkable and distinct achievement in the history of art.