The Greek lovers

Gray, Henry Peters (1819-1877)

Item type:

painting

Date of creation:

1846

Height:

102.2 cm  (40 1/4 in.)

Width:

130.8 cm  (51 1/2 in.)

Technique / Medium:

oil on canvas

Description

Two figures in the foreground: on the left a young man wearing a Phrygian cap and on the right a young woman seated and holding a long-necked lute. This instrument is not modelled on a real instrument but appears to be a cross between a guitar and a mandolin.

Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)

Lute [3394] (highly stylised instrument, not in fact an accurately depicted instrument. This represents the artist's conception of an Ancient Greek Instrument. American artists of the period were fascinated by Ancient Greece and were sympathetic to modern Greece's struggle for independence in the period between 1825 and 1875.)

RIdIM images

Image URLs

image link 1

Bibliographic references

Spassky, Natalie, et al. American paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Vol. 2, A catalogue of works by artists born between 1816 and 1845 (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985) 100–103. ISBN 0870994395. OCLC 715349564.

RIdIM record id

3190