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<\/a>\n\tbeale<\/a>, originally uploaded by natalieben<\/a>.<\/div>\n
\tPopped into the National Portrait Gallery today for half an hour to commune with the Stuarts, and was rewarded with the discovery that they’ve hung this self-portrait by Mary Beale, the first professional female painter in England.<\/p>\n
I’ve only previously seen it in reproduction. The first surprise was its size – this is a huge, impressive canvas (an impression magnified by the heavy gilt frame).<\/p>\n
The drapery of her dress and shawl is impressively detailed – it is thick, stiff and shiny. Would you call it a taffeta? If so a little research suggests it would then have been made of silk and very expensive.<\/p>\n
The painting is subtly lit from the right of the frame (as you look at it), and a shadow thrown on the wall to the left.<\/p>\n
This was painted, it is thought, as a showpiece for her work, just before she set up her professional studio, which was managed by her husband – you could almost call him one of the first house husbands. The companion painting of him is in Bury St Edmunds<\/a>.<\/p>\n And what I find surprising is that none of their friends, in the clergy or the Royal Society, seem to have found it odd that she was effectively supporting him financially.<\/p>\n But she’d be pleased to be hung in such august company today – Room 6 — with Boyle, Harvey and other scientific luminaries.<\/p>\n She has other works in the National Portrait Gallery<\/a>.<\/p>\n