Joan Carlile

ca. 1606 – 1679

Active in: England
Alternate names: Joan Palmer

Biography

Joan Carlile, a British portrait painter, was born around 1606. She was one of the first women in England to make a career as a professional artist. In 1626, she married the poet Lodowick Carlile and the couple lived primarily in London. Beginning in the 1640s, Carlile began to make a name for herself as a portraitist. Few of her works survive. She died in 1679.

Selected Works

A woman with light skin and blonde curls and a man with light skin, dark hair, and a beard are shown from the shoulders up. They are turned slightly toward each other, but look outward to the viewer.

Joan Carlile, Dorothy, Lady Browne (née Mileham) and Sir Thomas Browne, ca. 1641–1650. Oil on panel, 18.4 x 22.9 cm. National Portrait Gallery, London

A woman with light skin, dark shoulder-length curls, and a shiny silver gown stands in front of a dark landscape background with trees.

Joan Carlile, Portrait of an Unknown Lady, 1650–55. 110.7 x 90 cm. Tate Britain

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Selected works

Circle

Daughter of
Daughter of William Palmer

Wife of
Lodowick Carlile

Friend of
Mary Beale

Bibliography

Barber, Tabitha. “Joan Carlile: Portrait of an Unknown Lady.” https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/carlile-portrait-of-an-unknown-lady-t14495.

Burnette, Arianne. “Joan Carlile.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 2004/2010. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/4681.

Buckeridge, B. “Essay towards an English School of Painters.” In The Art of Painting. Edited by R. De Piles. London, 1754.

“Carlile [née Palmer], Joan.” Oxford Art Online. https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T014104.

Draper, Helen. “Mary Beale and Art’s Lost Laborers: Women Painter Sisters.” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 10 (2015): 141–51.

Fine, Elsa Honig. Women & Art: A History of Women Painters and Sculptors from the Renaissance to the 20th Century. London: Allanheld & Schram, 1978.

Greer, Germaine. The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1979.

Sawer, Patrick. “Typical! How Britain’s First Professional Female Artist Was Assumed to Be a Man.” The Telegraph, September 21, 2016. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/21/typical-how-britains-first-professional-female-artist-was-mistak/.

Talley, M. K. Portrait Painting in England: Studies in the Technical Literature before 1700. London, 1981.

Toynbee, Margaret. “Joan Carlile: Some Further Attributions.” The Connoisseur (1971): 186–88.

Toynbee, Margaret. “Joan Carlile: An Additional Note.” Burlington Magazine 100 (1958): 319.

Toynbee, M., and G. Isham. “Joan Carlile (1606?–1679): An Identification.” Burlington Magazine 96 (1954): 273–77.