Helen Draper

Dr Helen Draper is an independent Art Historian, and freelance Senior Easel Paintings Conservator working with institutional and private clients. Helen’s British art specialism is the life and work of painter Mary Beale (1633-1699) in particular, and the social, artistic and technical context of portraiture in mid-to-late seventeenth-century London in general. Helen’s 2020 interdisciplinary doctoral thesis: ‘Mary Beale (1633-1699) and her ‘paynting roome’ in Restoration London’ was co-supervised at the Institute of Historical Research and Courtauld Institute, and she has also published a peer-reviewed book chapter (2016) and two academic articles (2012 & 2015) based on aspects of her research. In 2020-21 Helen was a consultant to ‘Observations’, at Moyse’s Hall Museum in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, the first major Beale exhibition since 1999; and she is currently preparing the first art-historical monograph on Beale – with a checklist of known works – for publication in 2023.