Andrew Clayton-Payne
Menu
    • Home
    • About
    • Notable sales
  • Andrew Clayton-Payne
    • Press
    • Publications
    • Contact

Notable sales

MARY BEALE

(1632-1699)

Portrait of Bartholomew, the artist’s son

Portrait of Bartholomew, the artist’s son
Oil on paper laid on canvas
34 x 29 cm
Acquired by a Private Collector, UK

Provenance

Private Collection, UK

Literature

Tabitha Barber, Mary Beale: Portrait of a Seventeenth-Century Painter, her Family and her Studio, London, 1999

 

This free and spontaneous oil sketch of a young boy is of Mary Beale’s eldest son Bartholomew, who was baptised in 1656. The sketch relates very closely to two other sketches of Bartholomew in the Tate.

 

His appearance, both in age and costume, is very similar to that in Mary Beale’s self-portrait with her family (Geffrye Museum, London), painted c.1659–60, before the birth of her youngest son Charles. Whether these sketches are connected to the production of the Geffrye Museum portrait, or were simply executed at around the same time, is not known. They are painted in oil on paper, which seems to have been a feature of Beale’s working method in the early 1660s but is not known in her later career, when she made preparatory sketches in chalk on paper or in oil on canvas (see, for example, Portrait of a Young Girl c.1679–81, Tate T06612).

 

When this sketch was made, the Beale family was living in Hind Court, off Fleet Street in London, where Mary Beale’s husband, Charles, was employed as Deputy Clerk of the Patents Office. It is difficult to determine whether Beale had much of a commercial portrait practice at this date, but documents certainly record the production of portraits of family and friends. In her ‘painting room’, Beale had ‘pencills [sic.], brushes, goose & swan fitches’, as well as ‘quantities of primed paper to paint on’ (George Vertue, transcription of Charles Beale’s 1661 notebook, now lost, quoted in Barber 1999, p.16).

 

 

In the 1670s, with his younger brother Charles, Bartholomew assisted his mother in her commercial painting studio in Pall Mall, executing feigned stone cartouches in head and shoulder portraits as well as painting drapery. However by 1680 he had abandoned painting in order to pursue a medical career and was studying at Clare Hall, Cambridge.

 

Mary Beale was the favourite pupil of Sir Peter Lely and one of Britain’s first professional female artists. 

 

Read more

Related artworks

  • ${artwork.get('title_and_year')}
    CHARLES BEALE Carter, the Colourman
    Red chalk heightened with touches of black chalk 10 ¼ x 8 inches (26 x 20 cm)
    Acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
  • ${artwork.get('title_and_year')}
    SIR PETER LELY Portrait of a Gentleman
    Black chalk, heightened with white and touches of red, on brown paper 10 x 7 inches (25.5 x 17.8 cm) Sold in association with Day & Faber Ltd
    Acquired by a Private Collector, USA
Previous
|
Next
54 
of 116

andrew@clayton-payne.com

07771563850

By Appointment,

22 Dalmeny Court, 8 Duke Street

St James's, London SW1Y 6BL

Copyright © 2025 Andrew Clayton-Payne
Site by Artlogic

This website uses cookies
This site uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. Please contact us to find out more about our Cookie Policy.

Manage cookies
Accept

Cookie preferences

Check the boxes for the cookie categories you allow our site to use

Cookie options
Required for the website to function and cannot be disabled.
Improve your experience on the website by storing choices you make about how it should function.
Allow us to collect anonymous usage data in order to improve the experience on our website.
Allow us to identify our visitors so that we can offer personalised, targeted marketing.
Save preferences