Artistic Households: The Economics of Creative Work in Seventeenth-Century London

Artistic households: the economics of creative work in
seventeenth-century London*
Sarah Birt
University of London, United Kingdom
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/histres/article/94/265/489/6292060 by guest on 23 February 2022

Abstract
This article offers new insights into women’s occupational identities and the production of art
in seventeenth-century London. The identification of a previously overlooked portraitist named
Anne Wemyss (1633–98) shows that she was part of a much wider circle of artists and elite patrons
active during this period. An exploration of the training afforded to a number of female Painter-
Stainers’ Company apprentices that were connected to artistic households, followed by a micro-
historical study of the gender division of labour in Mary Beale’s household studio, further credits
women’s creative work in the wider economy.

Traditional, hagiographical studies like Ernst Gombrich’s The Story of Art have placed an
overwhelming emphasis on the oeuvre of a limited number of great men, disregarding the
work of women artists almost entirely.1 While the appreciation of art is a personal and
subjective experience, such narratives risk distorting our perception of art production in
early modern England. Indeed, a study focused on women artists in seventeenth-century
London shows that they viewed the process of painting and their artistic development
as vocational work, regardless of whether they painted professionally. Sources relating
to these artists therefore offer insights into early modern women’s education, their
acquisition of technical skills, and the practical by-employments required to run an
artist’s household and studio. Paintings by women artists illustrated their wider networks
of kinship, friendship and patronage, and more nuanced definitions of work allow us to
interpret creative expression through an economic lens. For example, once their work
reached the art market, it was advertised, engraved, collected and sold, indicating the
continued economic legacy that these women forged through their art, reinforcing their
status as an integral part of seventeenth-century London’s cultural elite.
The role of women working as artists in early modern England has only recently
received more attention. Mary Beale (1633–99) was a prolific and undeniably successful
portrait painter. However, much of the rich manuscript material relating to her life and
work remains unpublished in its entirety more than 300 years after her death.2 Moreover,
* I am grateful to Brodie Waddell for his feedback on earlier versions of this article and to the two anonymous
reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments.
1
E. Gombrich, The Story of Art (London, 1989).
2
The extensive research papers of Richard Jeffree and Elizabeth Walsh c.1970–90 that relate to Beale are
held by the Heinz Archive and Library at the National Portrait Gallery in London (MS. 128). They were recently
used by Penelope Hunting for her biography of Mary Beale (P. Hunting, My Dearest Heart: the Artist Mary Beale
(London, 2019)). Helen Draper has also published widely on Mary Beale (H. Draper, ‘Mary Beale (1633–1699)
and her objects of affection’, in Writing the Lives of People and Things, AD 500–1700: a Multi-Disciplinary Future for
Biography, ed. R. F. W. Smith and G. L. Watson (Farnham, 2016), pp. 115–41; H. Draper, ‘Mary Beale and art’s lost
laborers: women painter stainers’, Early Modern Women, x (2015), 141–51; and H. Draper, ‘“Her painting of apricots”:
the invisibility of Mary Beale (1633–1699)’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, xlviii (2012), 389–405). See also
H. Draper, ‘Mary Beale (1633–1699) and her “paynting roome” in Restoration London’ (unpublished Institute of
Historical Research, University of London Ph.D. thesis, 2020).
© The Author(s) 2021. DOI:10.1093/hisres/htab016 Historical Research, vol. 94, no. 265 (August 2021)
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Institute of Historical Research.
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490 The economics of creative work in seventeenth-century London
Beale has been described by art historians as ‘well-documented and tedious’, highlighting
the past neglect of the wider historical significance of her role as an urban businesswoman.3
While material relating to Mary Beale’s work is particularly comprehensive, information
regarding the work of other women artists in seventeenth-century London remains
fragmentary and elusive.4 The valuable contributions of wives and daughters to early
modern household economies was frequently overlooked in contemporary official
records due to the patriarchal nature of record-keeping. Yet Mary Edmond’s ‘close
study’ genealogical approach identified many of the female family members of artistic

households in London, illuminating the complex social networks linking painters’
families through marriage.5 Furthermore, Rosemary O’Day has highlighted the broader
sociocultural function of amateur artists, who acted as family historians by creating and
curating family portrait galleries.6 My article builds on this foundation by examining
three distinct yet interconnected threads of enquiry.
The first section begins by defining ‘creative work’ to encompass a range of
transferrable and potentially marketable skills with diverse applications, such as painting
and embroidery, before introducing research on a newly identified seventeenth-
century portraitist named Anne Wemyss (1633–98). Wemyss’s work as an artist was first
acknowledged by the historian Sir William Sanderson in 1658, but her identity has been
obscured by the passage of time and the idiosyncratic nature of early modern spelling.
Placing her in context with fellow artist Joan Carlile (1606?–79) shows how women
developed their social networks to procure elite patrons.
The second section considers how women gained an artistic education in the
seventeenth century. In the early modern period, notions of skill and expertise were
often associated with training through guilds, which have subsequently been viewed
by historians as masculine organizations.7 However, women did engage in formal
apprenticeships through the Painter-Stainers’ Company in seventeenth-century London,
and this section further credits their work within artistic households. The completion
of lengthy apprenticeships – which often represented a significant financial investment
for apprentices and their families – denoted a widely accepted level of skill, reinforcing
the correlation between expertise and experience.8 According to Karen Harvey, skills
‘depend on haptic or auditory information’ and are continually developed through
practice. Material objects reflect the skills of the maker, and ‘place and the environment
are critical to the acquisition and execution of skill’.9 An emphasis on the significance
3
M.Whinney and O. Miller, The Oxford History of English Art, viii: English Art, 1625–1714 (Oxford, 1957), p. 180.
A recent article considers the sociability of portrait sittings, though it uses sources relating to Mary Beale primarily
to explore the working practices of Sir Anthony van Dyck and Sir Peter Lely (A. Eaker, ‘The scene of the sitting
in early modern England’, Art History, xli (2018), 650–79).
4
Susan James explored women artists working in sixteenth-century England (S. E. James, The Feminine
Dynamic in English Art, 1485–1603:Women as Consumers, Patrons and Painters (London, 2009)).
5
M. Edmond, ‘Limners and picturemakers: new light on the lives of miniaturists and large-scale portrait-
painters working in London in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, Walpole Society, xlvii (1978–80), 60–242,
at p. 63.
6
R. O’Day, ‘Family galleries: women and art in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, Huntington Library
Quarterly, lxxi (2008), 323–49.
7
J. Rule, ‘The property of skill in the period of manufacture’, in The Historical Meanings of Work, ed. P. Joyce
(Cambridge, 1989), pp. 99–118, at p. 102.
8
M. Chase, Early Trade Unionism: Fraternity, Skill and the Politics of Labour (Aldershot, 2000), p. 49; and W. J.
Ashworth, ‘Quality and the roots of manufacturing “expertise” in eighteenth-century Britain’, Osiris, xxv (2010),
231–54, at p. 231.
9
K. Harvey, ‘Craftsmen in common: objects, skills and masculinity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’,
in Gender and Material Culture in Britain Since 1600, ed. H. Greig, J. Hamlett and L. Hannan (Houndmills, 2015),
pp. 68–89, at p. 83.
© 2021 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. 94, no. 265 (August 2021)
The economics of creative work in seventeenth-century London 491
of place and environment on the acquisition of skills demonstrates the importance that
apprenticeships could hold for young people intent on mastering a particular craft or
trade. Likewise, physical presence in an environment where a variety of work tasks were
pursued also offered opportunities for tacit learning. Yet many of the women in this
article were assigned the occupational titles ‘artist’ or ‘paintress’ by contemporaries as an
acknowledgement of their skill and occupational identities, despite not having formal
training. They developed their reputations and skills through the dedicated pursuit and
practical application of learned and developed techniques. Knowledge and techniques

could be gained from diverse sources, through personal correspondence, the observation
of artists at work and the copying of completed paintings by other artists. This section
therefore explores the occupational training afforded to female apprentices in artistic
households while also illuminating the myriad ways in which women could obtain the
necessary skills to engage in creative work outside of the livery companies in London.
The third and final section of this article analyses the gender division of labour in Mary
Beale’s household studio, revealing Beale’s devotion to painting but also her engagement
in other forms of work, such as teaching and household management. Kate Smith has
shown that haptic skills allowed consumers to develop their ‘understanding of objects,
particularly in terms of design, quality and workmanship’.10 Artists and artisans were
reliant on the quality of materials purchased from their suppliers, and the artist’s ability
to speak knowledgably about their work could instil confidence in the consumer of
a painting, encouraging commissions. Building knowledge in the correct preparation
and application of pigments was crucial to producing an effective artwork. Likewise,
developing skills as a draughtswoman was imperative for rendering a likeness observed
from life.There is certainly abundant evidence that Mary Beale and her husband Charles
were dedicated in their pursuit of knowledge about the art of painting in order to
establish a successful portrait studio. Yet evaluating the roles of those associated with
the studio shows how important individuals such as apprentices and maidservants were
to its economic success. Ultimately, these three threads demonstrate that women made
important contributions to the production of art in seventeenth-century London.
*
While Mary Beale’s status as a professional artist was unusual in the early modern period,
the application of a ‘creative work’ framework highlights a previously neglected aspect
of the paid and unpaid tasks performed by women in seventeenth-century London.This
in turn expands our understanding of women’s engagement in vocational work, which
contributed to the formation of their occupational identities. Recent projects that consider
early modern work through the use of verb-oriented and time-use methodologies have
sought to credit women’s work in the wider economy, providing new perspectives on
the gender division of labour.11 Yet studying specific occupational identities also raises key
questions about the nature of the work undertaken by individuals, within households
and in wider communities. Indeed, Tawny Paul has observed that ‘occupational plurality
was the norm’, indicating that many individuals and households diversified their income
and work tasks in the early modern period.12
10
K. Smith, ‘Sensing design and workmanship: the haptic skills of shoppers in eighteenth-century London’,
Journal of Design History, xxv (2012), 1–10, at p. 3.
11
Making a Living, Making a Difference, ed. M. Ågren (Oxford, 2016); and J. Whittle and M. Hailwood, ‘The
gender division of labour in early modern England’, Economic History Review, lxxiii (2020), 3–32.
12
T. Paul, ‘Accounting for men’s work: multiple employments and occupational identities in early modern
England’, History Workshop Journal, lxxxv (2018), 26–46, at p. 26; and A. Shepard, Accounting for Oneself:Worth, Status,
and the Social Order in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2015), pp. 249, 260.
Historical Research, vol. 94, no. 265 (August 2021) © 2021 Institute of Historical Research
Though historians such as Amy Erickson and Nicola Phillips have contributed
invaluable surveys of women in business in the eighteenth century, research into the
creative aspects of seventeenth-century women’s work is long overdue.13 Women’s
‘creative work’ required transferable skills such as technical knowledge and a well-
developed sense of taste and style, which was essential to the visual arts, and had diverse
applications, including painting, drawing, fan painting, lace-making, dress-making and
embroidery. Some early modern women were celebrated by their contemporaries
for their proficiency in needlework. Indeed, Isabella Rosner’s attribution of a

needlework cabinet to Susanna Perwich (1636–61), a musician and composer, quotes
her brother-in-law’s observation that her ‘cunning skill’ in embroidery saw her
‘excel’ in ‘pictures of men, birds, beasts, and flow’rs’.14 Women also made costumes
for theatrical productions. Queen Henrietta Maria’s household accounts show that
Blanche Brown was paid £4 for making ‘one pair of wings for Her Majesty’ for a
court masque in 1632, and Natasha Korda identified numerous occupational titles
related to costume-making, including silk-women, tire-women and spanglers.15 These
examples demonstrate that women’s broader engagement in creative work required
both imagination and expertise.
Women’s work as artists was recorded in myriad sources, including wills, printed
books and art sales catalogues. Sir William Sanderson’s Graphice (1658) listed numerous
proficient artists of his acquaintance, including several women. He wrote, ‘In Oyl
Colours we have a virtuous example in that worthy Artist Mrs. Carlile: and of others
Mrs. Beale, Mrs. Brooman, and to Mrs.Weimes’.16 Bainbrigg Buckeridge’s ‘Essay towards
an English school of painters’ (1706) again acknowledged Joan Carlile’s work, while
also confirming the artistic reputations of Mary Beale, Artemisia Gentileschi, Anne
Killigrew and Susannah-Penelope Rosse.17 The recognition afforded to Mary Beale by
Sanderson in 1658, before she set up her professional painting studio on Pall Mall in 1670,
shows that her status as a skilled artist was established regardless of whether she received
remuneration for her work. Less is known about ‘Mrs. Brooman’, yet a portrait bearing
the inscription ‘Sarah Broman / pinxit 16–’ probably identifies an example of her work.18
Moreover, art sales catalogues from the 1690s record four paintings by ‘Mrs. Broome’ –
‘the famous Paintress’ – suggesting that her reputation endured until at least the end of
the seventeenth century.19
13
N. Phillips, Women in Business, 1700–1850 (Woodbridge, 2006); and A. L. Erickson, ‘Eleanor Mosley and other
milliners in the City of London companies 1700–1750’, History Workshop Journal, lxxi (2011), 147–72.
14
J. Batchiler, The Virgins Pattern: in the Exemplary Life and Lamented Death of Mrs. Susanna Perwich (London,
1661), quoted in I. Rosner, ‘“A cunning skill did lurk”: Susanna Perwich and the mysteries of a seventeenth-
century needlework cabinet’, Textile History, xlix (2018), 140–63, at pp. 145–6.
15
C. Hibbard, ‘“By our direction and for our use”: the queen’s patronage of artists and artisans’, in Henrietta
Maria: Piety, Politics and Patronage, ed. E. Griffey (London, 2008), pp. 115–38, at p. 131; and N. Korda, Labors Lost:
Women’s Work and the Early Modern English Stage (Philadelphia, 2011), pp. 107–8.
16
W. Sanderson, Graphice: the Use of the Pen or Pencil or,The Most Excellent Art of Painting (London, 1658), p. 20.
17
Joan Carlile’s identity is confirmed in M. Toynbee and G. Isham, ‘Joan Carlile (1606?-1679) – an identifica-
tion’, Burlington Magazine, xcvi (1954), 273–7; M. Toynbee and G. Isham, ‘The family connections of Joan Carlile’,
Notes & Queries, cc (1955), 515–21; and B. Buckeridge, ‘An essay towards an English school of painters’, in R. de
Piles, The Art of Painting (London, 1754) pp. 354–430. Buckeridge misidentified her as ‘Anne Carlisle’.
18
London, National Portrait Gallery (hereafter N.P.G.), ‘British artists 1650–1675’, Red artists’ box file, A–M.
19
E. Millington, A Collection of Curious Pictures (London, 1690), p. 11; F. Verryck, A Curious Collection of Original
Paintings (London, 1690), p. 4; A Curious Collection of Painting and Limnings (London, 1690), p. 5; and A Collection of
Curious Original Paintings (London, 1690), p. 7.
New research into the identity of ‘Mrs Weimes’, taking into account the quirks of
early modern spelling, confirms that she was also the author of A Continuation of Sir
Philip Sydney’s Arcadia (1651).20 Like fellow artists Mary Beale and Anne Killigrew, Anne
Wemyss was the daughter of a clergyman and applied her talents towards both artistic
and literary pursuits.21 Wemyss’s will confirms that she worked as a limner and that
she had a prestigious patron at court, namely Anna Scott, duchess of Monmouth and
Buccleuch. Wemyss wrote:
To her Grace Anne the Dutches of of Monmoth Bucluegh, to whom I humbly acknowledge, I

owe to her comppasione a bountifull messure of Gods Blessings I give and present the best pictor
that is in Liming by my hand, her Graces name is at the Back of it: and Fore or five of the best
pictors of my work in Liming, as She Shall be also to chuse, fancie, or except of them desiring
thay may be caryed to her.22
This explicit reference to Wemyss’s work in limning demonstrates the personal value that
she placed on her creative endeavours. The painting labelled with ‘her Graces name’ was
surely a portrait of Anna Scott herself, and Wemyss probably painted other individuals
from elite social circles.23
Indeed, though no paintings are now attributed to Anne Wemyss, five miniatures
by ‘Mrs Weames’ were included in a manuscript list of pictures at Kingsweston in
1695. Kingsweston was the home of the diplomat Sir Robert Southwell (1635–1702),
confirming that Wemyss’s paintings were part of established art collections before her
death.24 Figures 1 and 2 show that Anne Wemyss copied portraits in ‘mignature’ of Sir
Edward Dering, ‘The Lady Dering’, ‘The Lady Percivale’, ‘Ann Aubrey Wife to the Lrd
Cheif Baron Montagu’ and Mary Howard, duchess of Richmond.25 ‘Lady Percivale’
was in all likelihood Catharine Perceval née Southwell (1637–79), sister to Sir Robert
Southwell and wife of Sir John Perceval, baronet.26 Of the other identifiable sitters,
Sir Edward Dering was married to Mary Harvey, presumably ‘The Lady Dering’, and
one of their daughters, Elizabeth, was the wife of Sir Robert Southwell, confirming
that this was principally a collection of family portraits.27 Sir Robert Southwell actively
20
J. Collins, ‘Weamys, Anna (fl. 1650–1651)’, Oxford Dictonary of National Biography (hereafter O.D.N.B.) (2004),
doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/68376.
21
Her father was Lodowick Wemyss (d. 1659), prebendary of Westminster Abbey, later the sequestered rector
of Lamborne in Essex. Her mother was Jane Wemyss née Bargrave (d. 1667). Anne was buried in Westminster
Abbey on 23 December 1698. Her monument is described in Registers of the Collegiate Church or Abbey of St. Peter,
Westminster, ed. J. L. Chester (London, 1876), pp. 243–4.
22
London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter L.M.A.), DL/AM/PW/1698/089, Will of Anne Wemyss, 1698.
23
It has not been possible to identify Wemyss’s portrait of Anna Scott. However, a portrait miniature bear-
ing the inscription ‘Duchess of Monmouth’, c.1680, now attributed to Richard Gibson, is part of the Buccleuch
Collections (old inventory no. 15/31). Unfortunately, there is no known provenance for this painting to connect
it to the limning described by Wemyss. Another portrait miniature, ‘formerly said to be Anne Scott, Duchess
of Monmouth and Buccleuch’, by an unknown artist c.1670, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (no.
EVANS.50), is also a potential contender for Wemyss’s work, though the sitter is now disputed. My thanks to
Kathryn Price, Collections Assistant at the Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust, and Katherine Coombs, Curator,
Paintings at the V&A, for providing further information about these works.
24
‘A list of pictures at Kingsweston, taken July 1695’ (1695), Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
<https://orbis.library.yale.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=7772491> [accessed 22 March 2021].
25
Lord Chief Baron Sir William Montagu was married to Mary Aubrey (1631–1700).
26
A portrait of ‘Katherine Southwell Lady Percivale Sister to Sr Robt’ by ‘Mr Wright’ (presumably John
Michael Wright) was recorded earlier in the Kingsweston list. A mezzotint of Catharine Perceval is part of the
National Portrait Gallery’s collection (N.P.G., D30656, Catharine Perceval (née Southwell), Lady Perceval by John
Faber Jr., after unknown artist, mezzotint, 1743).
27
The Kingsweston list includes references to portraits of Sir Edward and Lady Mary Dering after Sir Peter Lely.

Figure 1. Closet pictures 7–10 by Anne Wemyss in ‘A list of pictures at Kingsweston, taken July
1695’, 1695, manuscript, pen and brown ink. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
sought out both sixteenth- and seventeenth-century portraits that illustrated his kinship
connections, and Anne Wemyss was one of a number of artists that were employed to
copy likenesses for his collection.
Wemyss also bequeathed ‘my Aant Hassies pictor’ in her will to her ‘Cosin Misteris
Elizabeth Fulagar’, a Kentish relation through her mother, suggesting that she often
painted family and friends.28 A corresponding probate inventory dated 15 February 1698
listed artworks including ‘one Landskipp’ and ‘the Deceaseds fathers, mothers & brothers
picture in Oyle’, presumably painted by Wemyss herself.29 Anne Wemyss’s executrix
Hester Nowers née Bargrave, widow of the heraldry painter Francis Nowers, kept these
family portraits, suggesting their significant sentimental value. A further nine pictures
were appraised collectively at five shillings, with ‘another picture’, perhaps a larger-scale
work, valued at seven shillings.30 While Anne Wemyss’s literary endeavours are more
widely acknowledged today, her artistic reputation is not, which speaks to wider issues
concerning women’s often uncredited creative work. Despite Wemyss’s best efforts to
ensure the survival of her paintings through bequests, the absence of attributed paintings
and related provenance has obscured evidence of her labour and skill. However, Wemyss
was clearly part of a wider circle of artists and patrons, as acknowledged by Sanderson
in 1658. Indeed, her brother-in-law was Robert Walker (d. 1658), perhaps best known
28
L.M.A., DL/AM/PW/1698/089. Wemyss’s aunt was Joan Hussey née Bargrave.
29
L.M.A., DL/AM/PI/01/1699/009, Probate inventory Anne Wemyss, 1698/9. Anne Wemyss noted that she
inherited these paintings from her brother James in papers relating to a case in the Court of Chancery (The
National Archives of the U.K. (hereafter T.N.A.), C 8/225/75, Twyford v Weemys, 1675).
30
L.M.A., DL/AM/PI/01/1699/009.

Figure 2. Closet picture 11 by Anne Wemyss in ‘A list of pictures at Kingsweston, taken July 1695’,
1695, manuscript, pen and brown ink. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
for his portraits of Oliver Cromwell.31 Walker associated with other women artists,
including Mary Beale, who observed him painting a portrait of her father. Furthermore,
in 1652 ‘Mris Boardman’ of ‘Greyes Inn Gate’ informed the royalist antiquary Richard
Symonds (1617–60) that she had copied a painting of ‘Venus putting on her smock which
was the kings’, which Walker owned and valued at £60. She also gave Symonds advice
about pigments.32 This suggests that Wemyss, Boardman and Walker were all working
as artists during the Interregnum, and that Anne Wemyss’s dual roles as a writer and
an artist – along with her elite connections – afforded her a means of subsistence and
independence as an unmarried woman.
Many women artists like Anne Wemyss and her contemporary Joan Carlile had
connections to the Stuart courts of the seventeenth century. Indeed, Bainbrigg
Buckeridge noted that Joan Carlile ‘was much in favour with king Charles I. who
became her patron’, confirming that she worked for the most prestigious arts patron in
England. Charles I ‘presented her and Sir Anthony Vandyck with as much ultra marine
at one time, as cost him above five hundred pounds’, demonstrating his esteem for the
31
Robert Walker married Anne Wemyss’s sister Jane. His will requested that their daughter Jane Walker ‘shall be
kept and educated by her Grandmother Mistris Jane Weemes’ (T.N.A., PROB 11/285/95, Will of Robert Walker,
painter stainer of London, 2 Dec. 1658). Anne Wemyss bequeathed £250 to her niece Jane Twiford née Walker in
her will (L.M.A., DL/AM/PW/1698/089).
32
British Library, MS. Egerton 1636, ‘Memorandum-book of Richard Symonds, 1650–2’, fo. 198.There is com-
pelling evidence that ‘Mrs Brooman’ and ‘Mris Boardman’ were the same person. Parish registers record that Sarah
Broman, ‘wife of Wm Broman Stationer neare Grayes Inn’, was buried on 12 January 1658, and ‘Willm Brooman a
Stationer neere Grayes Inn gate’ was buried on 8 June 1661, showing a very plausible connection between the var-
iant spellings of Broman/Brooman, the portrait by Sarah Broman and the address recorded by Richard Symonds
for ‘Mris Boardman’ (L.M.A., P69/AND2/A/010/MS06673/004).
work of both artists.33 Early indications of Joan Carlile’s royal favour came in 1626 – the
year in which she married Lodowick Carlell, a courtier and playwright – when Henry
Mildmay was instructed ‘to deliver to Mrs Juan Carlile, the Queen’s Laundress, 12 oz.
of plate as a New Year gift for 6 years’.34 Carlile was succeeded in this post at court
by Bridget Sanderson, the wife of Sir William Sanderson, in 1629, but she evidently
retained links to the royal household through her work as an artist.35 Artists working at
court were rarely provided with yearly salaries, yet Carlile received £50 of silver plate
from the king ‘in consideration of some particular services’ in 1632, indicating another

likely payment for her work.36 Carlile made copies of paintings in the royal collection
‘in little’, and Erin Griffey found reference to ‘a Copy of Raphael by Mrs Carlisle’ in an
inventory of Henrietta Maria’s goods from 1669.37 Joan Carlile also recorded a ‘Picture
of the Princess in white sattin’ in her will, and this probably refers to one of Henrietta
Maria’s daughters. Other paintings listed in her will include ‘the little St Katherine and
the Mercury’ and a portrait of Lady Bedford, further evoking the influence of the visual
culture of the Caroline court.38
The considerable political upheavals of the mid seventeenth century, culminating in
the loss of their royal patrons, undoubtedly affected the financial stability of the Carlile/
Carlell household. Indeed, Bishop Brian Duppa recorded that Joan Carlile set up a
commercial painting studio in Covent Garden in 1653/4 ‘to raise up som fortune for
her self and children’ as she was ‘resolved there to use her skill for somthing more than
empty fame’, thereby connecting her artistic ambitions and economic necessity to her
status as a mother.39 Duppa further observed that ‘laying aside the reputation of not being
mercenary, she may look to the profitable part of it’ and encouraged Sir Justinian Isham
to visit her studio, because ‘I have had a long studied designe of having your picture, and
by that hand rather than by any else’, confirming the importance of social networks for
securing commissions.40 Lodowick Carlell’s continued role as keeper of the deer park
in Richmond kept the household continually divided between city and country, and
he maintained a diversified income by publishing plays. When the Carliles returned to
Richmond in 1658, Bishop Duppa feared that they were ‘in a declining condition (for
painting, and poetry have shutt out of dores providence, and good husbandry)’, a gentle
rebuke alluding to contemporary debates, which promoted the economic importance of
efficient household management over creative pursuits.41 Notably, in comments relating
to women’s education from 1636,Thomas Powell observed, ‘And in steade of Reading Sir
Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, let them read the grounds of good Huswifery. I like not a Female
Poetresse at any hand’.42 Yet this prescriptive advice was ignored by Anne Wemyss (whose
33
Buckeridge, ‘Essay’, p. 361.
34
Somerset Archives, DD/MI/19/35, ‘Warrant to Sir Henry Mildmay, knt., Master of the Jewels’, 1626.
35
C. M. Hibbard, ‘Versatility and service at the early Stuart court’ (unpublished research paper, 2013, kindly
provided by the author).
36
J. Wood, ‘Orazio Gentileschi and some Netherlandish artists in London: the patronage of the duke of
Buckingham, Charles I and Henrietta Maria’, Simiolus, xxviii (2000–1), 103–28, at pp. 116–19; and T.N.A., SC 6/
CHASI/1697, ‘Divers counties: account of the treasurer of Queen Henrietta Maria’, cited in Hibbard, ‘Versatility
and service’.
37
Buckeridge, ‘Essay’, p. 361; and E. Griffey, On Display: Henrietta Maria and the Materials of Magnificence at the
Stuart Court (London, 2015), p. 287.
38
T.N.A., PROB 11/367/313, Will of Joane Carlile, widow, 17 Aug. 1681.
39
B. Duppa to Sir J. Isham, 1 Feb. 1654, in The Correspondence of Bishop Brian Duppa and Sir Justinian Isham,
1650–1660, ed. G. Isham (Northampton, 1951), p. 81, letter xlii.
40
Duppa to Isham, 1 Nov. 1653; 1 Feb. 1654, in Correspondence, pp. 74, 82, letters xxxvi and xlii.
41
Duppa to Isham, 12 Jan. 1658, in Correspondence, p. 153, letter xcvii.
42
T. Powell, The Art of Thriving (London, 1636), p. 114.
A Continuation of Sir Philip Sydney’s Arcadia had several editions), Anne Killigrew (an artist
and poet) and the portraitist Joan Carlile in favour of more vocational creative work.
Joan Carlile bequeathed several paintings to her grandson, asking that they be sold only
if the arrears of £1,400 from Lodowick Carlell’s royal pension could not be recovered.43
She thereby indicated the importance that she placed on her work and also its saleability.
Indeed, in the 1690s two of Carlile’s paintings were auctioned: ‘Lot 111 Mrs. Carlile
the the [sic] great paintress’ and ‘A Two Ladys and a Lamb by Mrs. Carlile’, confirming
her posthumous reputation as an artist.44 These examples thus show the economics of

women’s creative work whereby Anne Wemyss and Joan Carlile secured elite patronage
and contributed significantly to their household income, while actively engaging in the
production of art in seventeenth-century London.
*
London was the centre for art production in England, and a broader understanding of
the creative work undertaken by artists, artisans and interested amateurs in the City
and wider metropolis reveals networks of individuals, united by a shared appreciation
of the visual arts. Work in the ‘Severall branches of the trade’, namely ‘Armes Paynters’,
‘House Paynters’, ‘Leather Gilders’ and ‘Picture makers’, was technically supervised by
the Painter-Stainers’ Company, though searches frequently revealed individuals working
outside its regulation.45 For example, the company’s court minutes noted in 1632 that
‘One Awstins wife that was An imbrodirer which used the Art of Painting whill he Lyved
… doth use painting still which is not Lawfull’.46 It was not unusual for artists to work
outside of guild regulations, but in the late 1640s efforts were made to admit established
artists, including Robert Walker and Peter Lely, to the company by redemption, which
was ‘£3 a man’.47 Mary Beale’s father, John Cradock, was admitted free of the company in
1648 after presenting a ‘master’ piece, to be hung in the Painter-Stainers’ hall.48 However,
neither Mary nor her husband Charles Beale registered formal apprentices through the
company, indicating that company membership was not essential for the women that
sought an artistic education or worked as artists.49
Though London’s livery companies are rarely associated with women’s work, the
Painter-Stainers’ Company apprentice book records sixty female apprentices bound
between 1666 and 1700.50 While Susan E. James observed that female membership of
craft guilds across Europe was ‘neither sought nor needed’ if a woman was from a family
of artists, some girls evidently did embark on formal apprenticeships in order to learn
specific skills and to secure the ability to trade in the City.51 Occupational information
was seldom recorded, making it difficult to identify the potential training available to
many of these young women. Yet my research has shown that around two-thirds of
female Painter-Stainers’ Company apprentices bound before 1700 were connected to
43
T.N.A., PROB 11/367/313.
44
Millington, Curious Pictures, p. 3; and A Curious Collection of Painting and Limnings, p. 1.
45
Guildhall Library (hereafter G.L.), MS. 5667/2, part 1, Painter-Stainers’ Company court minutes, 1649–1793,
fo. 213.
46
G.L., MS. 5667/1, part 1, Painter-Stainers’ Company court minutes, 1623–49, fo. 74.
47
G.L., MS. 5667/2, part 1, fo. 8r; and R. Johns, ‘Framing Robert Aggas: the Painter-Stainers’ Company and the
“English school of painters”’, Art History, xxxi (2008), 322–41, at pp. 329–30.
48
G.L., MS. 5667/1, fo. 225.
49
Charles Beale’s family had associations with the Salters’ Company, but there is no record of the Beales bind-
ing apprentices in either company. See N.P.G., MS. 128, drawer 6, folder 25.
50
In total, 84 female apprentices were bound between 1666 and 1795 (G.L., MS. 5669/1, Painter-Stainers’ ap-
prentice binding book, 1666–1795). See also Draper, ‘Mary Beale and art’s lost laborers’, p. 149.
51
James, Feminine Dynamic, p. 232
shopkeepers on the upper pawn of the Royal Exchange. Some exchange women were
engaged in creative work, including Anne Allen, ‘a picture Seller’ who occupied ‘the
Little Shop at the head of the North Staires’ in 1684, and many were retailers of clothing
and textiles.52 For example, Martha and Francis Hunlock’s stock, valued at over £647,
included ribbons, gloves, fans, necklaces, masks and ‘other sorts of millenary ware’.53 They
bound five female Painter-Stainers’ Company apprentices between 1668 and 1687.54
Likewise, five female apprentices were bound to the widowed milliner Judith Gresham
between 1673 and 1694, and fourteen female apprentices were bound to her husband

Seiliard Gresham’s former apprentice Thomas Marshall, also in that trade, between 1676
and 1712.55 These apprentices would all have been engaged in the broader ‘creative work’
of making and retailing decorative and fashionable accessories.
Even when female apprentices were bound to an artist, they were seemingly supervised
by the artist’s wife in a separate trade, indicating skill diversity within City households.
Kate Loveman recently contributed invaluable new research on the portraitist Daniel
Savile, who bound seven female Painter-Stainers’ Company apprentices between 1669
and 1688. Loveman concluded that the presence of women in his painting studio ‘would
lend respectability’, and these apprentices certainly could have assisted with portrait
sittings.56 However, she overlooked the role of Savile’s wife Dorothy, who was the named
tenant – along with her business partner Elizabeth Eaton – of two shops in the royal
exchange in 1693/4.57 Daniel Savile’s female apprentices therefore probably worked
predominantly with Dorothy Savile, in all likelihood as milliners. Yet they would also
have had numerous opportunities to observe Daniel Savile’s painting practice, learning
how to run an artist’s studio and providing assistance as required.
Another artist named John van der Spriett was noted ‘of Delft, painter of portraits’ by
Horace Walpole.58 He was the former apprentice of Johannes Verkolje, headman of the
Guild of St. Luke in Delft.59 After moving to London in the late seventeenth century,‘Mr
VanSpreat’ was ‘admitted as a forreigne Brother’ of the Painter-Stainers’ Company on 22
September 1682, promising his ‘proofe peice’ to indicate his competency as a painter.60
The following year he married Anne Randall, and in 1687 the Gresham Committee
instructed ‘Mrs Vandespritt who is Tennant’ to ‘Speedily pay’ her rent, indicating that
Anne was working at the royal exchange.61 John van der Spriett renewed this shop lease
in 1689, obtaining a further ‘foot and a halfe of Shoppe Roome’ in 1698, despite tax
52
Mercers’ Company Archives (hereafter M.C.A.), Gresham Repertories, 1678–1722, fo. 108.
53
L.M.A., CLA/002/02/01/1539, Francis Hunlock, inventory, 4 Sept. 1679.
54
G.L., MS. 5669/1, fos. 29v, 31v, 43v, 44r, 68v. Another apprentice, Hannah Gerrard, paid 20s upon admittance
to the company for ‘not being inrolled’ (G.L., MS. 5668, Painter-Stainers’ Company freedom register, 1658–1820).
55
G.L., MS. 5669/1, fos. 40v, 45r, 71v, 72r, 81r (Greshams); fos. 46v, 56r, 58v, 69r, 70v, 74r, 75v, 79v, 83r, 86r, 89v,
96v, 98r, 112r (Marshall).
56
K. Loveman, ‘Samuel Pepys’s first portrait painter: Daniel Savile and portraiture for the middling sort in
Restoration London’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, lxxxi (2018), 269–79, at pp. 276–7.
57
L.M.A., CLC/525/MS11316/008, Assessment book, Cordwainer Ward, 1693/4, fo. 85v. The Gresham
Repertories show that Daniel Savile was a long-standing leaseholder at the Royal Exchange.
58
Walpole’s source was J. Descamps, La vie des peintres flamands, allemands et hollandois (4 vols., London, 1753–63),
iii. 261, in H. Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England (5 vols., London, 1828), iii. 312.
59
W. Liedtke, M. C. Plomp and A. Rüger, Vermeer and the Delft School (New York, 2001), p. 352. The National
Portrait Gallery collection includes three engravings after a portrait of Increase Mather by ‘Jan van der Spriet’:
see ‘Jan van der Spriet (Spriett)’, National Portrait Gallery <https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/
mp62769/jan-van-der-spriet-spriett> [accessed 25 March 2021].
60
G.L., MS. 5667/2, part 1, fo. 272.
61
Lambeth Palace Library, FM I/9, Marriage allegation, 7 Apr. 1683; and M.C.A., Gresham Repertories, 1678–
1722, fo. 175.
records for 1693/4 confirming that Anne van der Spriett was tenant.62 No indication of
her trade is given in these records. However,‘Anne VanderSpryet’ was one of seventy-two
signatories on a petition to the House of Lords dated 1698, which requested amendments
to an act of Parliament that prohibited the sale of imported lace, thereby confirming
her separate trade as a retailer of ‘Bone Lace, Needle-work, Point and Cut-work’.63 By
November 1704 ‘Mrs Vandesprite’ was again summoned by the Gresham Committee to
pay the fines for renewing her shop lease, revealing her independent fiscal responsibility
for managing her business.64

Five apprentices, including three young women, were bound to John van der Spriett
through the Painter-Stainers’ Company between 1688 and 1693. Elizabeth Brabin,
Elizabeth Poole and Mary Baker were the daughters of an ‘Esquire’, a ‘Gentleman’ and
a ‘Citizen and Haberdasher’, respectively, and they were therefore more likely to be able
to afford skilled training through the livery companies.65 Marriage Duty Assessments
show that in 1695 John, Anne and their daughter Williampee van der Spriett lodged
in the household of Zachery Dixon. Only one of John van der Spriett’s apprentices
(Nicholas Phillipps) was listed as a servant in the household, suggesting that the other
apprentices lodged elsewhere.66 Nevertheless, while it is likely that Elizabeth Brabin,
Elizabeth Poole and Mary Baker worked chiefly with Anne van der Spriett in her trade as
a lacewoman, their connection to a Delft-trained portraitist working in late seventeenth-
century London is significant. The female apprentices bound to John van der Spriett
– and Daniel Savile – may well have acquired drawing or painting skills as part of their
training. Crucially, their formal apprenticeships demonstrate women’s engagement in
skilled, creative work, confirming the important economic contributions of Dorothy
Savile, Anne van der Spriett and their respective apprentices to these artistic households.
Women could also gain an artistic education informally, outside of the Painter-
Stainers’ Company. Indeed, the company inadvertently encouraged this practice through
its reactionary policies. For example, in the 1650s it ruled that ‘there shalbe noe meetinge
of any members of the Company or appteyning to the said Hall whereby to keepe an
Accademie in any parte thereof for draweing to the life’, obliging those interested in
learning drawing skills to arrange private tuition.67 Teaching, therefore, offered another
means of supplementing a household income, and some women artists were actively
responsible for transferring drawing and painting skills to their contemporaries. Joan
Carlile ‘taught a Lady to draw & paint & drew her own picture setting with a book of
drawings on her lap. & this Lady Standing behind her’.68 By including drawings in this
lost self-portrait, Carlile demonstrated her artistic credibility while also emphasizing
her role as a skilled instructor. Margaret Toynbee tentatively identifies Carlile’s pupil
as Frances Burwell, who specified in her will, ‘I give to my dear Grandchild Charles
Cottrel my Madonna after Raphael Urbin, to keep for my sake because done by me’.69
By copying the work of Raphael, Burwell was engaging in artistic self-study, while Joan
62
M.C.A., Gresham Repertories, 1678–1722, fos. 211, 340; and L.M.A., CLC/525/MS11316/008, Assessment
book, Cordwainer Ward, 1693/4.
63
Parliamentary Archives, HL/PO/JO/10/1/498/1215, ‘Petition of several retailers of Bone Lace, Needle-
work, Point and Cut-work’, 23 Feb. 1698.
64
M.C.A., Gresham Repertories, 1678–1722, fo. 396.
65
G.L., MS. 5669/1, fos. 73r, 77r, 80r.
66
L.M.A., COL/CHD/LA/04/01/021, Marriage assessment, St. Benet Fink, 1695.
67
G.L., MS 5667/2, part 1, fo. 46r.
68
M. Toynbee, ‘Some friends of Sir Thomas Browne’, Norfolk Archaeology, xxxi (1955–7), 377–94, at p. 393.
69
Toynbee, ‘Some friends’, p. 393.
Carlile used her affiliation with the Caroline court to study the work of Renaissance
masters, which later informed her teaching practice.
Women were also taught to paint by male artists, and once they had acquired this skill,
they could teach others, as was the case with Mary Beale. Anne Wemyss’s brother-in-
law, Robert Walker, and Peter Lely were both commissioned to paint portraits of Beale’s
father, which afforded Mary the opportunity to observe their painting techniques. Beale
subsequently maintained a close association with Lely as a professional artist. Susannah-
Penelope Rosse’s father, Richard Gibson, a successful court miniaturist to Charles I,

taught his daughter to paint, and he later became drawing master to the princesses Mary
and Anne.70 Alexander Browne – tutor to Elizabeth Pepys and Anna Scott, Anne Wemyss’s
patron – has been ascribed the occupational identities ‘miniature painter’,‘engraver’,‘print
seller’ and ‘colourman’, and he also wrote the artist’s manual Ars Pictoria (1669), indicating
the vast range of by-employments available to those engaged in creative work.71
Middling and elite women had greater access to resources but arguably less incentive to
paint professionally in a commercial studio. While their works demonstrate considerable
skill, Anne Killigrew and Susannah-Penelope Rosse do not appear to have accepted
payments for their paintings, though they are likely to have received payment in kind,
and Mary Beale’s apprentice Sarah Hoadly ‘only practised the art for her amusement’
after marriage.72 Nevertheless, their work shaped their occupational identities as artists.
Highlighting Susannah-Penelope Rosse’s skill as a draughtswoman, Buckeridge noted
that she ‘drew exceedingly well after the life in little’.73 Her artistic practice mirrored that
of a professional artist, and she shared sittings of the Moroccan ambassador, Muhammed
ibn Haddu, with Godfrey Kneller in 1682.74 Rosse’s portrait ‘The Morocco Ambassador
After Life’ depicted Haddu in a dignified pose while seated in front of a classical column.
It was included in her husband’s sale of their art collection in 1723, suggesting that she
kept the painting as a record of her work. The miniature is known by an engraving by
Robert White, confirming that women artists authored images that became more widely
disseminated through print culture.75
Women artists also contributed to the dissemination of painting techniques. In
‘Observations by M.B.’ (1663), included in Charles Beale’s manuscript Experimental Secrets
Found Out in the Way of My Owne Painting (1647–63), Mary Beale provided detailed
instructions for painting apricots, discussing the application of pigments in the manner
of a scientist. By demonstrating her technical knowledge, gained through experience
and innovation as well as initial tuition, Mary thus contributed to a wider seventeenth-
century artistic dialogue.76 Furthermore,Théodore Turquet de Mayerne recorded that in
1634 Joan Carlile ‘sent me the writing of Mr. Lanire’ followed by a detailed description of
the Italian technique of using an interim application of varnish after the dead colouring
process ‘to prevent the colours from sinking in’ to the canvas. Mayerne also recorded
that Nicholas Lanier ‘says to have learned this, & to have had the recipe from Signora
70
71
M. K. Talley, Portrait Painting in England: Studies in the Technical Literature Before 1700 (London, 1981), p. 181.
72
Walpole, Anecdotes, iv. 65.
73
74
J. Murdoch, ‘Rosse [née Gibson], Susannah-Penelope (c.1655–1700)’, O.D.N.B., doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/10633.
75
D. Foskett, Samuel Cooper, 1609–1672 (London, 1974), p. 101.
76
Draper, ‘“Her painting of apricots”’, p. 391.
Artemisia daughter of Gentileschj who paints extremely well’.77 By discussing painting

techniques with other artists, Joan Carlile, Artemisia Gentileschi and Mary Beale thus
refined and imparted their technical knowledge to others. These examples reinforce the
impression that women artists were actively involved in art instruction and production.
Furthermore, the skilled labour of artists’ wives and female Painter-Stainers’ Company
apprentices contributed significantly to the economic diversity of artistic households.
*
Mary Beale was a prolific and proficient artist with an enduring commitment to painting.

A study of her household studio therefore offers a unique insight into the experience of
an early modern businesswoman and her significant role as an economic actor within her
household. Her husband Charles Beale’s notebooks, kept each year, with hand-written
notes interleaved in William Lilly’s Merlini Anglici Ephemeris almanacs, contain a wealth
of information about her daily work. Only two notebooks survive for 1677 and 1681,
though brief sections were transcribed by George Vertue from the notebooks dated 1661,
1671, 1672, 1674 and 1676.78 Charles recorded Mary’s progress on commissions alongside
household accounts and the duties undertaken by himself and their sons, Bartholomew
and Charles the younger. This third and final section will therefore consider the gender
division of labour in Mary Beale’s household studio.
The Beale household was fundamentally reliant on the sale of portraits to subsist, with rates
set at £5 for a head and £10 for a three-quarter-length portrait.79 Charles Beale recorded his
efforts to improve the economic efficiency of the studio, noting that Mary painted on onion
sacks and bed ticking as the cost of canvas rose, and he contributed significantly through the
sale of pigments to other artists and by priming canvases.80 The family experienced ‘great
straites & disappointment of money’ when payments for commissions were late but they were
able to maintain their position by borrowing small sums from friends and relatives.81 Table 1
collates the known yearly household income, demonstrating the economic importance of
Mary Beale’s creative work, which was also supported by the work of her wider household-
family.82 Moreover, taxation records suggest that the Beales maintained a steady income
from the sale of portraits into the 1690s. In 1689 Charles Beale was assessed at 12s for ‘Goods
Wares Moneys Stock’ based on a Poll Tax of Twelve Pence in the Pound.83 Additionally, the
Four Shillings in the Pound tax levied in 1693/4 assessed Charles Beale’s personal estate at
£200, a figure directly comparable to income in previous years.Yet Mary Beale’s essential
contribution to the household economy was obscured because these records primarily
noted the (usually male) head of the household.84
77
T. Turquet de Mayerne, Pictoria, Sculptoria,Tinctoria, in Talley, Portrait Painting, pp. 144–6.
78
Bodleian Library, MS. Rawl. 8°572, Charles Beale notebook, 1677; and N.P.G., MS. 18, Charles Beale,
Notebook, 1681.Vertue’s notebooks were included in Walpole, Anecdotes.
79
Charles Beale, Pocket book, 1672, with commentary by Richard Jeffree, circa 1975, National Portrait Gallery
Heinz Archive, Richard Jeffree papers, drawer 2 folder 22; the pocket book transcript from George Vertue,‘Notebook
A.x’, circa 1740, British Libra; in ‘The art world in Britain 1660 to 1735,’ at https://artworld.york.ac.uk/sources/5.3004
[accessed 3 April 2021].
80
Mary Beale: Portrait of a Seventeenth-Century Painter, Her Family and Her Studio, ed. T. Barber (Peterborough,
1999), p. 19.
81
N.P.G., MS. 18, Notebook, 1681.
82
M. Bustin, ‘Experimental secrets and extraordinary colours’, in Barber, Mary Beale, pp. 45–59; and N. Tadmor,
‘The concept of the household-family in eighteenth-century England’, Past & Present, cli (1996), 111–40, at pp. 111–14.
83
L.M.A., COL/CHD/LA/03/032/007, Assessments 12d. in the £, WM & M C.20.
84
Charles Beale, in D. Keene and others, ‘City of Westminster, St James Westminster, Pall Mall Ward, Pall Mall
North’, in Four Shillings in the Pound Aid 1693–1694: the City of London, the City of Westminster, Middlesex (London,
1992), available at British History Online <https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/london-4s-pound/1693-4/
westminster-pall-mall-north> [accessed 29 March 2021].
Table 1. The Beales’ household income.
Year Sale of portraits Sale of pigments Total

1671 118-05-00 118-05-00
1672 202-05-00 101-11-00 303-16-00
1674 216-05-00 216-05-00
1676 134-00-00 200-00-00 334-00-00
1677 416-04-00 416-04-00
1681 209-00-00 209-00-00

Average 266-05-00
Notes: Information derived from Charles Beale’s notebooks, recorded in £ s d (N.P.G., MS. 128, drawer 2, folder
22, Bodleian Library, MS. Rawl. 8°572, Charles Beale notebook, 1677, and N.P.G., MS. 18, Notebook, 1681).
Mary Beale’s own writing provides an insight into her perspective on the power
dynamics and patriarchal structure of her household. In ‘Discourse on Friendship’
(1666/7), Beale confessed that she was ‘swallowed up in the love of my Friend’,
contenting herself ‘with the second place of authority in that Kingdom of Friendship
where he absolutely rules’, thereby ordering her place below her husband, despite her
pre-eminent economic role.85 Nevertheless, Charles Beale made frequent references to
Mary Beale as his ‘dearest heart’, while recording her work, suggesting that their united
sense of purpose contributed to the success of their household studio.86 Their friendship
also manifested itself through art. On 25 August 1677 Mary ‘painted neare 9 houres’
at the fourth sitting to complete Charles’s portrait.87 The many hours spent on this
work, which was not sold, indicates that her punishing workload was not born solely
out of the requirements of subsistence but also out of love, pleasure, friendship and her
desire to achieve technical excellence. This also shows that remuneration was not the
only signifier denoting an individual’s occupational identity as an artist in seventeenth-
century London, and supports the conclusions of Jane Whittle and Mark Hailwood that
housework and care work did not dominate the working lives of the majority of early
modern women.88
Insights into the balance between Mary Beale’s status as a working artist and a mother
can be gleaned from several sources. Even before Mary began painting professionally, she
employed a wet nurse for her son Charles. On 21 November 1662 Samuel Woodford
noted in his diary, ‘Little Cosen Charles Beale came home from nurse’, suggesting that
he had potentially been away from the household for two years and that Mary obtained
more freedom to paint through this practice.89 Though conduct literature lamented a
working wife’s use of wet nurses – ‘Nay, their young children must pack forth to nurse /
All is not got that is put in the Purse’ – it was not always practical or avoidable when the
household relied on the talents of a wife to subsist.90 Indeed, Alexandra Shepard recently
observed that the cost of wet nursing was ‘more than offset by a mother’s continued
85
Brit. Libr., Harley MS. 6828, Beale, ‘Discourse’, fo. 513v.
86
87
Bodl. Libr., MS. Rawl. 8°572, Notebook, 1677.
88
Whittle and Hailwood, ‘Gender division of labour’, p. 15.
89
C. Gibson-Wood, ‘Samuel Woodforde’s first diary: an early source for Mary Beale’, Burlington Magazine, cxlvii
(2005), 606–7, at p. 607.
90
‘The good wife’s forecast’, in A Century of Ballads, ed. J. Ashton (London, 1887), p. 9.

Figure 3. Mary Beale, Mary Beale, c.1666. © National Portrait Gallery, London
contribution to her household economy’.91 Jane Whittle has argued that the importance
of care work to the wider economy is often overlooked by historians, and the practice of
using wet nurses clearly enabled Mary Beale to continue her creative work even though
she had not yet set up her professional household studio.92
Mary Beale’s self-portrait circa 1666 in Figure 3 provides perhaps our best insight
into her views on motherhood and its complex association with her status as an artist.
Mary depicted herself seated in her studio with her artist’s palette hanging prominently
on the wall. Her hand rests on a double portrait taken from life of her two sons,
simultaneously establishing her identity as a mother while reaffirming her status as an
artist by including them as a work in progress, painted on canvas. When viewed as an
act of commercial self-promotion, this self-portrait highlights the technical skill of an
91
A. Shepard, ‘The pleasures and pains of breastfeeding in England c.1600–c.1800’, in Suffering and Happiness in
England 1550–1850: Narratives and Representations: a Collection to Honour Paul Slack, ed. M. J. Braddick and J. Innes
(Oxford, 2017), pp. 227–46, at p. 241.
92
J. Whittle, ‘A critique of approaches to “domestic work”: women, work and the preindustrial economy’, Past
& Present, ccxliii (2019), 35–70, at pp. 35–6.
artist able to capture the likeness and personality of children from life. Richard Jeffree
and Elizabeth Walsh recognized that children’s portraits were ‘among her most successful
works’, and it was arguably Beale’s unique selling point as both an artist and mother that
encouraged parents to commission comparable works of their own children from her.93
Moreover, her gaze is not the languorous look of the Windsor Beauties painted by Lely
in the 1660s but the intelligent glance of an artist and intellectual. Her self-portrait thus
engaged with instantly recognizable elements of Restoration portraiture, but adapted
and responded to them in an act of self-expression. Further indications of her efforts

to cultivate her reputation as a fashionable portraitist can be inferred from her déshabillé
attire, an aesthetic that denoted her genteel economic status and classical education. This
was evidently a conscious choice, as Mary habitually wore ‘Painting Aprons’ to protect
her clothing while working in her studio. Indeed, ‘6 Ells of Cloth’ was purchased from
Mr. Dod the linen draper by Charles Beale to make these aprons on 20 February 1677.94
Thus Mary Beale emphasized her fashionability and proficiency as an artist, though
family was inextricably entwined with her identity and work.
According to the notebooks, Mary and Charles Beale shared parental responsibilities,
which offers a useful insight into the division of unpaid care work in the household.
Their friendship with Lely afforded an excellent opportunity for providing an artistic
education for their sons. On 30 September 1672 Charles Beale ‘carry’d my two Boys.
Charles & Bart. to Mr Lelys & shewd them all his pictures’.95 He noted that Lely’s
collection was worth more than £10,000, a considerable artistic resource, and in 1677
he purchased sketchbooks for them.96 Mary Beale and her son Charles demonstrated
their eagerness to study the works of other artists for self-improvement through their
joint excursion on 16 November 1681: ‘My Dear Heart self and Son Charles saw at Mr
Waltons in Lincolns Inn Fields the Lady Carnarvan’s picture a Half Length done by
Sir Antony Van Dyck’, as well as ‘a rare head done by Holbin of the Lord Cromwell’.97
Mary and Charles Beale also arranged for Charles the younger to have tuition from
their friend Thomas Flatman. On 5 March 1677 Charles Beale wrote, ‘I sent my Sonn
Charles to Mr Flatmans in order to his beginning to learn to Limne of him’. By 26
October 1677 he had paid £3 4s to Mr. Godbolt ‘for my Son Charles’s Desk … in order
to accommodate him for Limning’.98 After a short period of informal tuition, Charles
the younger began painting miniatures at home, a practice he continued until 1688 when
his failing eyesight encouraged him to paint exclusively in oils.99 This tuition enabled
Bartholomew and Charles the younger to assist in their mother’s studio. In 1677 Charles
Beale listed payments to Bartholomew ‘for work he did in laying in the Drapery of
some of his Mothers Pictures in order to her finishing them’, with subsequent payments
to Charles the younger, suggesting that their participation was necessary during busy
periods.The Beale’s decision to pay their sons implies a complex dynamic between their
roles as studio assistants and informal apprentices. Bartholomew earned over £31 and
Charles the younger earned £16. They were paid 2s 6d for each oval cartouche and £1
E. Walsh and R. Jeffree, ‘The Excellent Mrs. Mary Beale’ (London, 1975), p. 15.
93
J. Ashelford, The Art of Dress: Clothes and Society 1500–1914 (London, 1996), p. 98; Bodl. Libr., MS. Rawl. 8°572,
94
Notebook, 1677; and D. de Marly,‘Undress in the oeuvre of Lely’, Burlington Magazine, cxx (1978), 749–51, at p. 750.
95
Charles Beale, Pocket book, 1672.
96
97
98
99
Walsh and Jeffree, ‘The Excellent Mrs Mary Beale’, p. 15.
for painting drapery in a half-length portrait, a useful insight into the potential wages
that could be earned by assistants in an artist’s studio.100
Charles Beale’s notebooks offer the opportunity to perform time-use studies for
Mary’s daily work, showing that she worked very long hours, thus demonstrating
her dedication to completing commissions and to achieving success as an artist. For
example, on 8 May 1677 Sir John Lowther attended a second portrait sitting, Lady
Thynne’s picture was dead coloured (an early stage in the painting process) and Mr.
More’s picture was ‘painted upon a 4th time about 3 houres’. Mary evidently organized

her work carefully by rotating commissions, thus allowing painted canvases to dry
between sittings. May 1677 was a particularly busy month with at least forty-seven
separate sittings. Indeed, on 7 August 1677 Charles referred to Mary as ‘my Dearest
& most indefatigable Heart’, as he recorded that she painted upon ‘Mris Lowthers
and Mris Fanshaws picture a 2d time’ and ‘very neare finished the face of the Coppy
old Sir John Lowthers picture for Mrs Lowther’. Mary Beale exhibited considerable
agency as a professional artist and businesswoman, providing an ‘Acquittance’ for £30
brought by a servant of Mrs. Lowther as payment for portraits in July 1677. She also paid
household debts in kind by painting portraits of the household’s creditors, settling a debt
of £6 for books from Henry Brome on 18 July 1677 by painting ‘Bromes Daughters
picture’. Beale also answered letters from aristocratic patrons regarding commissions,
demonstrating that her literacy was vital to her role as an artist.101 Furthermore, in July
and August 1681 Mary travelled to Newcastle House to copy portraits of Lord and Lady
Ogle after Lely for her elite patrons.102
Given the considerable time that Mary Beale devoted to painting, the notebooks
indicate the understandable importance of servants to the management of the Beales’
household studio. The 1677 notebook records quarterly payments to two maidservants,
first Mary and later Susan Gill.Their respective wages equated to an annual income of £3
10s, and their work undoubtedly allowed Mary Beale to focus on painting, though she
probably also directed their labour.103 Charles Beale the younger’s drawing of Susan Gill
circa 1680 indicates that domestic servants working in artistic households also worked as
models for observational drawings from life, showing another facet to the economic and
cultural value of their work.104
Furthermore, at least two female apprentices – Sarah Hoadly and Keate Trioche –
assisted Mary Beale in her studio. Sarah Hoadly was a ‘Scholar of Mrs. Beale and her Son
Charles’, who lived with the Beales until around 1690 when she was ‘for her self set up
in business’, suggesting that this was the reason why she had undertaken training in the
Beale household.105 Keate Trioche purchased ultramarine from Charles Beale indicating
that she painted works of significant quality to warrant this expensive pigment, and she
also worked as a model for several portraits from life.106 Furthermore, Charles Beale’s 1672
notebook recorded that Mary painted a ‘Magdalen painted from Moll Trioche’, Keate

100

101
102
103
104
British Museum, Charles Beale the Younger’s sketchbook, 1981,0516.15.1-94, 1680–1714.
105
J. Hoadly, The Works of Benjamin Hoadly (3 vols., London, 1773), i, p. xi; and J. Egerton, ‘Hoadly [née Curtis],
Sarah (1676?–1743)’, O.D.N.B. (2004), doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/13379.
106
Trioche’s sister.107 The Beale’s goddaughter Alice Woodford also actively contributed to
the household economy by working as an artist’s model. She lived with the Beales after
her mother’s death, and Charles Beale received regular payments from her father, Samuel
Woodford, to pay for her maintenance, probably as part of an arrangement akin to an
informal apprenticeship.108 This indicates that the Beale’s household studio continually
provided opportunities for a younger generation to contribute to the production of art
and that the household-family formed an integral part of its ultimate success. It also
shows that Mary Beale combined childcare and teaching duties with her work as an

artist. For example, in September 1677 she ‘supervised her own picture & did the Brest to
it’, offering further opportunities for her studio assistants to contribute to works painted
from life.109 By employing members of her household-family in a variety of tasks to
support her work, Mary Beale was able to demonstrate and improve her technical skills,
garnering future portrait commissions while also providing opportunities to train the
next generation of painters. An analysis of the gender division of labour in the Beale’s
household studio therefore reveals the economic importance of women’s work in an
artistic household in seventeenth-century London.
*
By focusing on women artists in seventeenth-century London, this article contributes to
our understanding of women’s skilled, creative work and its social, cultural and economic
value. It shows that artistic pursuits could define some women’s occupational identities
and that women artists developed skills that enabled them to actively contribute to the
wider economy. Moreover, it enhances our understanding of the nature of art production
in early modern London by demonstrating how women such as Joan Carlile, Anne
Wemyss and Mary Beale were able to obtain commissions from elite patrons and to
support themselves and their extended household-families through their work.
An exploration of how women artists gained an artistic education shows that even
those whose training and practice was less formal – taking place outside of guild control
– were able to acquire skills in painting. Skilled work in this context is understood
to comprise ‘creative work’ tasks that involved the production of material goods that
were luxury commodities and required specialized knowledge of materials, tools
and techniques. Extending the ‘creative work’ framework to encompass other skilled
work, such as embroidery and lace-making, highlights the importance of design and
imagination, and the vocational aspects of tasks that may have been unremunerated but
were still regarded as work by those engaged in them. The recognition of women artists
in early modern texts such as Sir William Sanderson’s Graphice (1658) shows that skill was
celebrated regardless of gender or professional status.
The material relating to Mary Beale’s household studio offers a rare glimpse into the
gender division of labour of tasks relating to care work and domestic work in the early
modern period. Charles Beale’s notebooks show that he shared parenting duties with
his wife and that Mary Beale was actively involved in teaching her sons and her studio
assistants/apprentices to paint portraits. Mary Beale is a particularly well-documented
businesswoman working in early modern London, and evidence of her economic
agency as well as her talent as an artist further contextualizes the activities of a much
107
Charles Beale, Pocket book, 1672. Helen Draper notes that the Trioche sisters were the daughters of Daniel
Trioche, servant to the 2nd Earl and Countess of Strafford (Draper, ‘Mary Beale (1633–1699) and her “paynting
roome”’, p. 181).
108
109
wider group of women – including Joan Carlile, Sarah Broman and Anne Wemyss –
whose work was celebrated by contemporaries but has subsequently been overlooked.
Interdisciplinary approaches thus provide potentially powerful new perspectives on
vocational work in the early modern period, showing that it required commitment and
practice to develop skills through self-study. Furthermore, it is only through in-depth
studies that we can credit the invaluable work performed by wives, female apprentices
and maidservants within artistic households, illuminating their myriad contributions to
facilitating the production of art in seventeenth-century London. By exploring women

artists in a social, economic and cultural historical context, we can establish new stories
of art and women’s skilled, creative work.

Artistic Households: The Economics of Creative Work in Seventeenth-Century London

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Artemisia daughter of Gentileschj who paints extremely well’.77 By discussing painting

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Table 1. The Beales’ household income.

Year Sale of portraits Sale of pigments Total

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Bodl. Libr., MS. Rawl. 8°572, Notebook, 1677.

Bodl. Libr., MS. Rawl. 8°572, Notebook, 1677.

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