Exhibition: Fruit of Friendship: Portraits by Mary Beale

Mary Beale (1633-1699) was one of Britain’s first professional woman artists and is subject of this exhibition featuring 25 of her works from public and private collections, including some never seen before in public.

The Gallery is an appropriate location for this exhibition. Beale built her career within her ‘paynting roome’ at the top of her family home, and new historical research has revealed that her studio and home is thought to have been sited at the same location of the Philip Mould gallery. Therefore, her career is going to be celebrated at the location where she made her name as a professional artist, on Pall Mall.

Beale was the most prolific woman artist of her period. Working throughout the turbulent late-17th century, she established one of the earliest successful studios for a British woman artist. The exhibition will span her entire career and include self-portraits, portraits of her family and friends, and formal commissions.

Fruit of Friendship also sheds light on Beale’s progressive studio practice and highlight its radical reversal of conventional gender roles for the period. Beale’s husband Charles, dedicated himself to his wife’s career and supported her studio diligently by priming canvases, manufacturing pigments, and recording business in a series of notebooks and almanacs.