Maria Verelst was born in Vienna in 1680, daughter of Harman Verelst, a painter who worked successively in The Hague, Amsterdam, and Vienna, and who settled in London in 1683. She was the pupil of her uncle, the flower painter and portraitist Simon Verelst. Comparatively little of her work is recorded, but she painted small portraits on copper as well as portraits on the scale of life. She was much patronized by Scottish sitters. She also had considerable musical and intellectual attainments. She died in London in 1744. [Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 318.]
Artist Bibliography
1981
Waterhouse, Sir Ellis. The Dictionary of British 18th Century Painters. Woodbridge, 1981: 389.
1992
Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 318.