Portrait of a Youth

The sitter was formerly incorrectly identified as the poet Abraham Cowley (1618-67) but may be the painter's elder son, Bartholomew Beale (1656-1709), who appears at the age of about ten in Beale's 'Self-Portrait' in the National Portrait Gallery. Mary Beale was an English painter, probably first taught by her father, an amateur painter. In 1652 she married Charles Beale, with whom she lived at Walton until c. 1654, when the couple moved to London, where she established a busy portrait practice in Pall Mall.