An Unknown Girl
Mary Beale (Barrow 1633 – London 1699)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1670 - 1699
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
635 x 533 mm (25 x 21 in)
Order this imageCollection
Castle Ward, County Down
NT 836226
Caption
Mary Beale (née Cradock) was one of 17th-century England’s most commercially successful portraitists. Her reputation aged 25 was such that she was included in a list of notable painters in oil by the historian William Sanderson in 1658, along with her older contemporary Joan Carlile. In 1652 she had married Charles Beale (bap.1631–1705), a civil servant and artists’ supplier (or ‘colourman’), and moved to London, attracting a broad clientele of gentry, nobility, clergymen and friends. She developed a lifelong friendship with the painter Sir Peter Lely (1618–80), who commended her work. After a period in Hampshire seeking refuge from the plague, and with her husband’s job uncertain, they set up a studio in Pall Mall with Beale as the main breadwinner and Charles as studio manager to his ‘Dearest Heart’. It is to Charles’s detailed notebooks, just two of which survive, that we owe our knowledge of her sitters and prices, and of the couple’s joint experiments trying different pigments and supports. Her manuscript Observations (1663), on the materials and techniques employed ‘in her painting of Apricots’, is the earliest known text of its type by a female artist. The sitter in this thoughtful portrait is unknown. It appears to have begun as a head study, the white chemise and pink silk drapery possibly left unfinished. The sitter bears some resemblance to Moll Trioche, whom Beale painted as a Penitent Magdalene in 1671. Or perhaps it is Moll’s sister Kate, who would become Beale’s studio assistant in 1681, when Charles recalls her undertaking a number of paintings for the purpose of ‘study & improvement’. The picture may be mounted on its original strainer, although the canvas has been lined at an unknown date onto a coarse twill. A drawing after this portrait by one of Mary Beale’s sons, Charles (1660–1714), is in the collection of the British Museum.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, An Unknown Girl, by Mary Beale (Barrow 1633 – London 1699). A bust portrait of a brown-haired girl, long hair parted in the centre and tied back, wearing a white shift and dark pink silk shawl.
Full description
The sitter of this thoughtful portrait is unknown. It appears to have begun as a head study, the white chemise and pink silk drapery being sketched in but possibly left unfinished. The sitter bears some similarity to Moll Trioche, whom Beale painted as a Penitent Magdalene in 1671. Or perhaps it is Moll’s sister Kate, who would become Beale’s studio assistant in 1681, at which time her husband recalls her undertaking a number of paintings for the purpose of 'study & improvement'. The picture may be mounted on its original strainer, though the canvas has been lined at an unknown date onto a coarse twill. A drawing after this portrait by one of Mary Beale’s sons, Charles (1660-1714), is in the collection of the British Museum (Gg,5.92).
Provenance
purchased from Edward Ward, 7th Viscount Bangor, in 1967, with a grant from the Ulster Land Fund
Makers and roles
Mary Beale (Barrow 1633 – London 1699), artist
References
Conroy, Rachel, Women Artists and Designers at the National Trust, 2025, pp. 36-7