Archives: Persephone Post

Visitors to the shop often comment on the ‘Bloomsbury’ atmosphere – which is appropriate as Lamb’s Conduit Street is in the heart of Bloomsbury. But another important influence is Charleston: its aesthetic and its values, grey (for example) being a very Charleston colour. So for those readers of the Post who haven’t yet made it to the house itself (it’s in Sussex, an hour from London by train) this week’s Post will have five photographs from a book we sell ln the shop: Charleston, A Bloomsbury House and Garden by Quentin Bell and Virginia Nicholson with photographs by Gavin Kingcome. It’s an £18.99 paperback with hundreds of beautiful pictures and interesting text, and we highly recommend it. Here first of all is the house itself.

This is Anne Killigrew again: Venus attired by the Graces. This painting may allude to her relationship with Mary Beale, who was often cast as a modern-day Venus. There is a piece in Apollo magazine (headed A Studio of One’s Own) which is excellent about the exhibition and the three women painters (here).

This is Joan Carlile again – The Stag Hunt 1650s which anticipates the Georgian ‘conversation piece’ by some 75 years. There is a very informative blog about Joan Carlile here.

Joan Carlile (c. 1606-79) painted Portrait of a Lady in the 1650s. She can claim to be the first British professional woman artist – she seems to have turned a pastime into a career through financial necessity (like so many women novelists).

Mary Beale (1633-99) painted The Young Bacchus in the 1660s, it’s normally at Moyses Hall Museum, Bury St Edmunds. Mary Beale was born in Barrow, near Bury St. Edmunds. Although the historian George Vertue suggests she was a pupil of Sir Peter Lely, in fact her early training is unknown. By 1670 she was established in Pall Mall as a professional portrait painter, rising to the peak of her success in 1677. She was able to adapt to the change of fashion in portraiture after the sudden death of Lely in 1680. Early on she realised that the way to professional success and yet to stay respectable was to paint clergymen (she was the daughter of a Puritan rector). Her devoted husband acted as her colour man and managed her studio

An exhibition finished last week at a gallery in London (Lyon and Turnbull) called Bright Souls: The Forgotten Story of Britain’s First Female Artists. It featured three artists – Joan Carlile, Mary Beale and Anne Killigrew. None of them had the advantage of a professional artist in their family and how they learnt to paint is not clear. But what extraordinary paintings! This is a self-portrait by Anne Killigrew (1660-85), normally at Berkeley Castle. Anne Killigrew’s death at the age of 25 prompted the then Poet Laureate John Dryden to write: ‘Still with a greater blaze she shone, And her bright soul broke out on ev’ry side.’