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Tilly Kettle, 1735–1786, British, active in India (1769–76), Eleanora Frances Murray, in or before 1768
- Title:
Eleanora Frances Murray
- Date:
- in or before 1768
- Medium:
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions:
- 50 x 39 15/16 inches (127 x 101.4 cm)
- Credit Line:
- Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
- Copyright Status:
- Public Domain
- Accession Number:
- B1976.7.18
- Classification:
- Paintings
- Collection:
- Paintings and Sculpture
- Link to Frame:
- B1976.7.18FR
- Subject Terms:
- armchair | chair | costume | flowers (plants) | guitar | interior | leisure | light | music | pillow | portrait | woman
- Associated People:
- Grant, Eleanor Francis
- Access:
- Not on view
Note: To make an appointment to see this work, please contact the Paintings and Sculpture department at ycba.paintings@yale.edu. Please visit the Paintings and Sculpture collections page on our website for more details. - Link:
- https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:259
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Completed prior to the artist’s departure for India in 1768, this portrait depicts Eleanora Frances Murray shortly before her marriage to fellow Scot, Alexander Grant of Arndilly, the owner of the Albion, Eden, and Papine plantations in Jamaica. The production of sugar on these plantations, from which Grant derived his wealth, relied on the labor of enslaved Africans. Murray’s beauty was celebrated in her day in the pipe song “Bonnie Nellie Murray.” Here, her opulent silk robe and headdress reflect the fashion among wealthy women in eighteenth-century Britain for Ottoman-inspired clothing, or turquerie, with the cittern, a guitar-like instrument behind her, adding to the effect. This combination of appropriated and imagined elements was intended to convey a sense of culture and luxury tied to stereotypes of “the East.” Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2022
Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 132-133, N590.2 A83 (YCBA) [YCBA]
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