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Mary Beale was the most successful woman artist working in Britain in the seventeenth century. She probably made this portrait of her son Bartholomew (1656-1709) when he was about four years old, when Beale was living in Covent Garden, an area popular with artists, among whom was her friend and mentor Peter Lely. Beale frequently turned to her young children as subjects in studies such as this one and in her finished paintings. A related picture, for which this may be the study, casts Bartholomew in the guise of a young Bacchus. Mary Beale was not the only female professional artist in this period; the names Joane Carlile (d. 1679) and Anne Killigrew (1660-1685) were also celebrated in their day. Likewise, the ledgers of the Painter-Stainers' Company of London, the guild that regulated the trade, record the names of many other women who trained and worked as painters in the late seventeenth century. There is still much research to be done to establish the significance of their contributions to British art, which have been largely ignored or marginalized in conventional histories.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016