Terms and conditions of use
Portrait of a lady
(c. 1680)
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
76.5 × 63.7 cm
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by Krystyna Campbell-Pretty and the Campbell-Pretty Family in memory of Ros McCarthy, 2017
Gallery location
17th Century & Flemish Paintings Gallery
Level 2, NGV International
About this work
Mary Beale was the most distinguished woman portrait painter of the Stuart period. Her strongest artistic supporter was Sir Peter Lely, Charles II’s court painter. The friendship between Lely and Beale enabled her, famously, to observe the master in the act of painting – considered a remarkable privilege – in order to study his technique. This alluring portrait is one of Beale’s more flirtatious portraits of a female subject. The sitter’s features bear some similarities to the contemporaneous literary figure Aphra Behn (1640–89), although an exact identification is not possible at this stage.
Artwork Details
Subjects (general)
Portraits
Subjects (specific)
frames (ornament areas) hairstyles half figures women (female humans)
Movements
Baroque Restoration (British style or period)
Provenance
Provenance: Private collection, UK; Bonham’s Knightsbridge, 27 April 2016, Portrait of a lady, said to be Miss Weston, bust-length, in a gold dress with a blue sash, Lot 186, as Circle of Mary Beale; Philip Mould & Company, London, 2016–17.