Mary Cradock was born on March 26, 1633 in Barrow, Suffolk, the daughter of John Cradock, a Puritan rector. Her mother, Dorothy, died when she was 10. Her father was an amateur painter, and member of the Painter-Stainers' Company, and she was acquainted with local artists, such as Nathaniel Thach, Matthew Snelling, Robert Walker and Peter Lely.
She was taught by her father.
She became a semi-professional portrait painter in the 1650s and 1660s, working from her home, first in Covent Garden and later in Fleet Street.
The family moved to a farmhouse in Allbrook, Hampshire in 1665 due to financial difficulties, her husband having lost his position as a patent clerk, and also due to the Great Plague of London. For the next five years, a 17th-century two storey timber-framed building was her family home and studio. She returned to London in 1670, where she established a studio in Pall Mall, with her husband working as her assistant, mixing her paints and keeping her accounts. She became successful, and her circle of friends included Thomas Flatman, poet Samuel Woodford, the Archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson, and Bishops Edward Stillingfleet and Gilbert Burnet. She became reacquainted with Peter Lely, now Court Artist to Charles II. Her later work is heavily influenced by Lely, being mainly small portraits or copies of Lely's work. Her work became unfashionable after his death in 1680.
Mary Beale died in 1699 in Pall Mall, and was buried at St. James's, Piccadilly in London.
Portrait of a Physician
Portrait of a Youth
John Lake (1624-1689)
Oil on Canvas Painting of Charles Beale by Mary Beale
Dcoetzee from the National Portrait Gallery, London
Benjamin Whichcote
Dcoetzee from the National Portrait Gallery, London
Portrait of George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633-1695)
Jan Baptist Van Helmont (not Robert Hooke)
King Charles Ii
Elizabeth Coke of Derbyshire (1676–1739)
Detail of Margaret Godolphin by Maybe Mary Beale
Portrait Der Königlichen Maitresse Nell Gwyn.
Mary Wither of Andwell
Portrait of Mary Moll Davis (fl.1663-1669)
Self-portrait
Jane Fox, Lady Leigh as a Shepherdess
Portrait of a Young Girl
Henry Cavendish (1630–1691), 2nd Duke of Newcastle
In 1652, at the age of 18, she married Charles Beale, a cloth merchant from London - also an amateur painter.
Of her children, a son, Bartholomew, died young. A second son, also called Bartholomew, painted portraits before taking up medicine. A third son, named Charles after his father, was also a painter, specialising mainly in miniatures.
