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This review of The Mirror and the Palette by Jennifer Higgie is from the May 2021 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here. What’s the best way to paint an apricot in oils? In 1663, the 30-year-old amateur painter Mary Beale laid out her method: Let yor shadowes bee pinke & Lake and Bury oker & in some places […] according as ye life requireth it a litle fine Ultramarine: in some other places where ye shadowes are glowing & ffaint as they are sometimes in ye Crowne there touch upon yor generall rendering with pinke & Vermilion mixed together. This apricot advice is the first known piece of writing on art by a woman, a statement of technical capacity that reflects Beale’s ambition to be considered a serious artist in the years before she sold a painting. A decade on, she was a hugely successful portraitist in London, taking in 83 commissions in one year at the height of her popularity. ....