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Creator:
Tilly Kettle, born in London, England, 1735; active in England and India; died in Aleppo, Syria, 1786
Formerly attributed to Francis Cotes, born in London, England, 1726; active in England; died in Richmond, England, 1770
Title:
Eleanora Frances Murray
Date:
in or before 1768
Materials & Techniques:
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:
On view
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

In a New Light: 500 Years of British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2025-04-01 - 2026-01-30) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

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]

Sotheby's sale catalogue : catalogue of fine eighteenth and nineteenth century paintings : 20 November 1968, Sotheby's, November 20, 1968, p. 28, lot 92, Auction Catalogues (YCBA)

George P. Stringer, Tilly Kettle's portraiture and the art of identity in eighteenth-century Britain and India [PhD Dissertation, Keele University], Keele, UK, 2018, pp. 73, 241, fig. 4.18, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global [ORBIS]


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