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George Beare’s distinctive Portrait of an Elderly Ladyand a Girl is unquestionably his masterpiece. Of the relatively small number of paintings known to be by him (between fifty and seventy-five in all), this is the only double portrait. By bringing together in one image two sitters of greatly differing ages, he creates not only a touching portrait of what must be a grandmother and grandchild, but also a study in contrasts in which his eye for subtleties of texture and color is shown to full advantage.
Beare makes the most of the visual possibilities inherent in the depiction of young with old. The thick strokes of paint that describe the old woman’s wrinkled face stand out against the smooth surfaces of the creamy pink flesh of the young girl; similarly the deep grays of the older sitter’s silver silk-damask dress provide a rich contrast to the milky-white linen of the grandmother’s cap and the handkerchief draped over her shoulders.The pink silk underneath the white cloth of the young girl’s dress reinforces the tonalities of her youthful and vibrant complexion, while the grays and whites of the old woman’s dress emphasize her advanced age and heighten the pictorial impact of her slackening and yellowed skin. By placing the sitters against a darkened background, Beare draws our attention immediately to the heads of the women, particularly that of the elderly sitter who candidly engages us with her slightly wizened yet still vibrant eyes. The sumptuous fabrics in the portrait suggest that the sitters belonged to one of the wealthier families of the Salisbury region where Beare had his practice, and it has been suggested that they were members of the Grove family of Ferne House, Berwick St. John, Wiltshire. Most of Beare’s patrons were from the upper-middle classes living in or around Salisbury.
The work fuses a frank “naturalism” made popular in the 1740s by William Hogarth with the more rened sensibilities of the English Rococo idiom as practiced by Francis Hayman. Beare’s conation of these two styles suggests that he may have spent time in London, and itis possible he trained at the St. Martin’s Lane Academy —where he would have been exposed to both Hogarth and Hayman. Over the course of the last fty years, Beare’s œuvre has slowly emerged from the shadows cast by these more celebrated contemporaries. The dearth of biographical evidence of his life has hampered both the assessment of his training and practice and, ultimately, the authentication of unsigned paintings. Most of his known paintings—including this one—are signed and dated, and most date from the period between 1743 and 1749. On May 22 of the latter year, the Salisbury Journal noted, “Last Week died near Andover, Hants, Mr Beare, lately an eminent Face Painter in this City.”

Julia Marciari-Alexander

Julia Marciari-Alexander, This other Eden, paintings from the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, p. 50, no. 13, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (YCBA)