Mary Woodall CBE (1901–1988) was a British art historian, museum director, and Thomas Gainsborough scholar.
Mary Woodall was born in Chelsea, west London, into the "industrial aristocracy".
Her mother was his wife Bertha (née Nettlefold), whose family wealth came from an engineering firm bearing their name.
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.