Catherine Ross Gurney (Mrs. Henry Gurney)

Alexander, Cosmo (ca. 1724-1772)

Item type:

painting

Date of creation:

1766

Height:

130.2 cm  (51 1/4 in.)

Width:

104.0 cm  (40 15/16 in.)

framed: 149.9 x 124.5 x 6.4 cm

Technique / Medium:

oil on canvas

Description

Portrait of Catherine Ross Gurney standing with her right hand on the lower-manual keys of a two-manual harpsichord (partially obscured); a book with musical notation (illegible) lies open its music rack. The harpsichord has dark accidentals over white keys, and its upper manual is suggested but not distinctly represented in the painting; the builder's name is not clear in the online image, but has been identified elsewhere as Kirkman.

People as subjects

Gurney, Catherine Ross

Iconclass

48C723(...)
portrait of a musician (HARPSICHORDIST)

Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)

Harpsichord [2251]

RIdIM images

Image URLs

image link 1

Bibliographic references

Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. and Melissa Renn. American paintings at Harvard, volume one: Paintings, watercolors, and pastels by artists born before 1826 (Cambridge and New Haven: Yale University Press (U.S.) and Harvard Art Museums, 2014) 42-43, cat. 2, ill.

RIdIM record id

5628