Roy Precious - Antiques & Fine Art has dated this 17th Century Oil Portrait to the 17th Century.
A fine painting, characteristic of Mary Beale's mature and best period. She presents a sympathetic and insightful view of the sitter.
Beale saw her, as do we, with a clear gaze.
This is a beautiful portrait painted with the sensitivity that typifies the best of Beale's female portraits, coupled here with a pensive beauty.
The sitter is depicted within a feigned carved stone oval, much used by Sir Peter Lely and William Wissing, and which Beale used so often as to be almost a signature.
MARY BEALE (1633-1699) was born in Barrow, Suffolk, the daughter of John Cradock, a Puritan rector. Her mother, Dorothy, died when she was 10. Her father was an amateur painter, and member of the Painter-Stainers' Company, and she was acquainted with local artists, such as Nathaniel Thach, Matthew Snelling, Robert Walker and Peter Lely. In 1652, at the age of 18, she married Charles Beale, a cloth merchant from London - also an amateur painter.
She became a semi-professional portrait painter in the 1650s and 1660s, working from her home, first in Covent Garden and later in Fleet Street. Mary Beale was not the only female painter in England, but her name alone has survived as that of the only woman to make a successful living, and to enjoy a flourishing practice as a portraitist.
She became reacquainted with Sir Peter Lely, now Court Artist to Charles II. Her later work is heavily influenced by Lely, being mainly small portraits. He was Beale’s strongest artistic supporter. The friendship between Lely and Mary Beale enabled her, famously, to observe the master in the act of painting – a remarkable privilege – in order to study his technique. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that many of her portraits have been misattributed to Lely or his Studio .She was widely reckoned to be Van Dyck's most accomplished copyist. Her grasp of Lely's colouring is evident, but the pleasant and direct manner in which she treats her sitters is entirely her own.
SIZE: 35 x 29.25 inches framed.
PROVENANCE: Private Collection, Kent; the previous owner now resident in South America.
Roy Precious - Antiques & Fine Art has dated this 17th Century Oil Portrait to the 17th Century.
Roy and nadine precious: specialists in portraiture from the 16th to the 20th century. Established in 1972.
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Portrait of a Lady, c.1680; Attributed to Mary Beale.
