Mary BEALE (1633 - 1699)

Sir Edward Lyttelton of Munslow (1589-1645)

oil on canvas

33 1/2 x 27 inches, inc. frame

Price: £6,500 GBP

Mary Beale was one of the most successful professional female Baroque-era portrait painters of the late 17th century.

Mary started painting alongside her father, whose membership in the Painter-Stainers’ Company introduced her to the renowned court painter Peter Lely and many of his contemporaries. At 18, Mary married Charles Beale, a color-mixer — Charles would stretch many of her canvasses, and mix pigments for work. Later, Charles would meticulously record Mary’s artistic process, clientele and technique — giving us a rare window into the world of a brilliant woman flourishing in a nearly exclusively male field.

Mary would paint the noted physician Thomas Sydenham - who wrote the foundational medical text Observationes Medicae, the politician William Pierrepont, John Lake, the Bishop of Chichester, and John Tillotson, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and John Maitland (1616–1682), Duke of Lauderdale. Mary Beale’s catalogue became a who’s who of London’s most influential — and she was prolific.

This portrait is a great example of her style and ability to depict the social role of her sitter. Sir Edward Lyttelton, who is looking at us with kind and fair eyes, was a Chief Justice of North Wales.