Mary Beale

The favourite pupil of Sir Peter Lely, Mary Beale had two sons, Charles and Bartholomew. Both boys worked in their mother's studio, assisting her with the painting of draperies, before Bartholomew gained an MB from Clare College Cambridge, thereafter practicing as a physician at Coventry. The younger son, Charles, studied miniature painting under Thomas Flatman, and later produced portraits in his mother's style. He is best remembered today for the sries of red-chalk drawings of family and friends, made between 1679 and 1681, which for their informal and direct approach are unique in British drawing for this period (British Museum, London and Pierpont Library, New York).  

This sketch relates to two similar studies at Tate Britian of Charles' elder brother, Bartholomew (T13245 & T13246), dated circa 1660. Both the Tate pictures are also painted in oil on paper, and the treatment of the subject is almost identical, with the head and hair finely modelled down to a loosly painted white collar, below which the area of the body is left unpainted, with the ground showing, and set against a dark background. Another sketch of the artist husband, also called Charles Beale, painted in the same way, is in the National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG 1279).