Mary Woodall

Mary Woodall CBE (1901–1988) was a British art historian, museum director, and Thomas Gainsborough scholar.

Life and work Mary Woodall was born in Chelsea, west London, into the "industrial aristocracy". Her father was Henry Woodall, director of the Gas Light and Coke Company and son of Corbet Woodall, also in the energy business. Her mother was his wife Bertha (née Nettlefold), whose family wealth came from an engineering firm bearing their name.

She attended Cheltenham Ladies' College and then Somerville College, Oxford, where she studied history. After college she attended the Slade School of Fine Art, under Franklin White and it is there she first studied the drawings of Thomas Gainsborough. She was awarded a Ph.D. at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1939 with a dissertation on Gainsborough's landscape drawings.

During World War II Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery had seven galleries bombed. In 1942 Woodall secured a position at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery as Keeper of Art, and under the director Trenchard Cox, who arrived in 1944, helped rebuild the damage.

Publications 1939: Gainsborough’s Landscape Drawings 1948: Catalogue of Pictures by Richard Wilson and his Circle. Birmingham: City Museum & Art Gallery

1960: Catalogue of Paintings. Birmingham: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery