1. Mary Beale was part of a small band of female professional artists working in London.
26 Facts About Mary Beale
1. 2.
Mary Beale was a writer, whose prose Discourse on Friendship of 1666 presents a scholarly, uniquely female take on the subject.
3.
Charles Mary Beale was a Civil Service clerk at the time, who in 1660 succeeded his father as deputy clerk of the patents office.
4.
Mary Beale's tomb was destroyed by enemy bombs during the Second World War.
5.
Mary Beale preferred to paint in oil and water colours.
6.
Mary Beale started working by painting favours for people she knew in exchange for small gifts or favors.
7.
Charles Beale kept close record of everything Mary did as an artist.
8.
Mary Beale would take notes on how she painted, what business transactions took place, who came to visit, and what praise she would receive.
9.
Mary Beale became a semi-professional portrait painter in the 1650s and 1660s, working from her home, first in Covent Garden and later in Fleet Street in London.
10.
When living in Covent Garden, Mary Beale was a near neighbour to artist Joan Carlile.
11.
Mary Beale received no formal training from an academy, had no connection to an artist guild, and no royal or courtly patronage.
12.
The Mary Beale's commissioned portraits from Lely, of themselves and their friends.
13.
In 1663 Mary Beale wrote Observations, an instruction on painting apricots using oils.
14.
Mary Beale wrote a manuscript called Discourse on Friendship in 1666 and four poems in 1667.
15.
Once Mary Beale did start painting for money in the 1670s, she carefully picked whom she would paint, and used the praise of her circle of friends to build a good reputation as a painter.
16.
Mary Beale typically charged five pounds for a painting of a head and ten pounds for half of a body for oil paintings.
17.
Mary Beale made about two hundred pounds a year and gave ten per cent of her earnings to charity.
18.
Wasle and Jeffree consider it truly remarkable that Mary Beale was responsible for being the breadwinner of the family.
19.
In 1681, Mary Beale took on two students, Keaty Trioche and Mr More, who worked with her in the studio.
20.
Mary Beale painted him a total of five times in 1664,1672,1677,1681, and 1687.
21.
Elizabeth was a close friend of Mary Beale's and was one of the individuals who received her writing "The Discourse on Friendship".
22.
Mary Beale was commissioned by Strangways to paint his portrait along with ones of his wife, his son and his daughter during the 1670s.
23.
Mary Beale became the 2nd Duke of Newcastle in 1676 and he and his Duchess Frances nee Pierrepont were frequent patrons of Mary, from whom they commissioned their portraits in 1677.
24.
Mary Beale enjoyed painting miniature sculptures from 1679 to 1688, when his eyesight started to fail him.
25.
Mary Beale's paintings are often described as "vigorous" and "masculine".
26.
Forty years after her death, when researching for a history of British art, Vertue praised her work, saying "Mrs Mary Beale painted in oil very well" and "work'd with a wonderfull body of Colours".