Women as artists appeared earlier than women as players. For several centuries they had been accustomed, as a polite accomplishment, to illuminate manuscripts, and indeed this for a long time was the only form of art worthy of the name in England. There had developed, however, considerable taste and skill in wood carving, as well as further advancement of the ancient art of the goldsmith, which, as we have seen, was developed enough in Anglo-Saxon times to constitute an English school. But art in its more particular meaning was not found domestic to England until the reign of Charles I. It was the influence of the great school of Dutch artists that awakened in England art instinct and created artistic talent. England's art history may be dated from the time of Van Dyke's residence in the country, at least in so far as it embraces women. When Van Dyke was at the English court, Anne Carlisle shared with him the royal patronage. The king's fine taste in art matters had unerringly led him to fix his favor upon this woman, and her works show the undoubted genius she possessed.
The Puritan embroilment, which was destructive to all forms of intellectual advancement as long as it kept the nation in an unsettled state, had a repressive effect upon art; but from the time of the Restoration the stream flowed on with increasing depth and volume, and the list of England's woman painters not only became creditable to the country, but afforded another criterion by which to prove the lofty possibilities of the sex. Mary Beale, a painter in oil and in water-colors, who received high commendation from the famous portrait painter Sir Peter Lely, was a painstaking and industrious artist. Anne Killigrew, who was maid of honor to the Duchess of York, in the brief span of her life acquired a permanent reputation, not only by her portraits, which included those of the Duke and Duchess of York, but by her verses as well. These and other women of talent were the precursors of the women who did so much for the art history of the eighteenth century.
In considering the place of woman in literature during the period of which we are writing, it is well to keep in mind the words of Lady Mary Wortley Montague: "We are permitted no books but such as tend to the weakening and effeminating of our minds. We are taught to place all our art in adorning our persons, while our minds are entirely neglected." This opinion of woman has not yet become obsolete, so that it is too much to expect to find, in the seventeenth century, women of the highest literary attainments, and certainly one need not look for women among the creators of literary style and founders of English literature. A literary woman is to some masculine minds a matter of everlasting scorn. Such minds will not be offended in the perusal of the literature of the seventeenth century by finding women wielding the pen for the instruction or the edification of elect circles of superior intellects or to please the vulgar taste of the common people. Excepting as writers of occasional verse or of memoirs, the names of few female authors appear in the literary annals of the period.