page_title: Mary Beale
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Mary Beale / Early life
caption_attribution_description: Charles Beale the Elder, by Mary Beale (died 1699). See source website for additional information. This set of images was gathered by User:Dcoetzee from the National Portrait Gallery, London website using a special tool. All images in this batch have been confirmed as author died before 1939 according to the official death date listed by the NPG.
context_page_description: Mary Beale was amongst the most prolific and commercially successful British portrait painters of the late 17th century and, along with Joan Carlile and Susan Penelope Rosse was part of a small band of female professional artists working in London. Beale became the main financial provider for her family through her professional work - a career she maintained from 1670/1 to the 1690s. Beale was also a writer, whose prose Discourse on Friendship of 1666 presents scholarly, uniquely female take on the subject. Her 1663 manuscript Observations on the materials and techniques employed "in her painting of Apricots", though not printed, is the earliest known instructional text in English written by a female painter. Praised first as a "virtuous" practitioner in "Oyl Colours" by Sir William Sanderson in his 1658 book Graphice: Or The use of the Pen and Pensil; In the most Excellent Art of PAINTING, Beale’s work was later commended by court painter Sir Peter Lely and, soon after her death, by the author of "An Essay towards an English-School", his account of the most noteworthy artists of her generation.
context_section_description: Mary Cradock was born in the rectory of Barrow, Suffolk, in late March 1633. She was baptised on 26 March by her father John Cradock in All Saints Church in the village. Her mother was Dorothy; her maiden name is illegible on her marriage record to John Cradock. Aside from being a rector, John Cradock was also an amateur painter, who may have taught Mary how to paint. It was common for fathers to teach their daughters how to paint at the time. Growing up in Barrow, Mary lived close to Bury St Edmunds. A group of painters worked in Bury St Edmunds, including Peter Lely and Matthew Snelling, whom Mary may have met in her youth. On 23 August 1643, John and Dorothy Cradock gave birth to a son named John. Dorothy died not long after the birth. During the Civil War, John Cradock appointed Walter Cradock, a distant cousin of his, as guardian of his children John and Mary.
  Mary Cradock met Charles Beale (1632-1705), a cloth merchant who was also an amateur painter, during a visit to the Heighams of Wickhambrook, who were related to the Yelverton and Beale families. Charles Beale wrote her a passionate love letter and poem on 25 July of an unknown year. Mary Cradock married Charles Beale on 8 March 1652 at the age of eighteen. Her father, John Cradock, was gravely ill at the time and died a few days after Mary's marriage. The couple moved to Walton-on-Thames at some point afterward. Charles Beale was a Civil Service Clerk at the time, but eventually became Mary's studio manager once she became a professional painter. At some point, Charles was working for the Board of Green Cloth where he mixed colour pigments. Circa 1660-64 the family moved to Albrook, (now Allbrook), Otterbourne, Hampshire, to escape the plague. Throughout their marriage, Mary and Charles worked together as equals and as business partners, which was not often seen at the time. On 18 October 1654 Charles and Mary's first son, Bartholomew, was buried. Little else is known about their first son. Their second son was baptised on 14 February 1655/6 and also named Bartholomew. Their third son Charles was born in 1660.
caption: Her husband, the painter Charles Beale the Elder, by Mary Beale
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