Emily and George Mason

Devis, Arthur William (1762-1822)

Item type:

painting

Date of creation:

1794-1795

Height:

108.0 cm  (42 1/2 in.)

Width:

99.1 cm  (39 in.)

Technique / Medium:

oil on canvas

Description

In an interior setting, one child plays a tambourine, while the other sits at her feet with a toy rifle and another tambourine; a harpsichord and a page of music are partially visible beside them; visible through an archway behind the children are two adult figures in Indian attire (recalling British crown rule in India).

Iconclass

42A5
child (at home)
42AA5
child (at home) - AA - girl
43C74
child in environment and time
43C74322
(children playing) pleasure-fair instruments
43C78
(playing with) toys

Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)

Harpsichord [2251]
Tambourine [2746] (probably a toy)

Musical works

illegible music notation

RIdIM images

Image URLs

image link 1

Bibliographic references

D'Oench, Ellen G. The conversation piece: Arthur Devis & his contemporaries (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 1980) 28, 78, cat. no. 69.



Leppert, Richard D. The sight of sound: Music, representation, and the history of the body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 112, 113, fig. 44.


Praz, Mario. Conversation pieces: A survey of the informal group portrait in Europe and America (University Park: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1971) 159, 177, no. 124.



Steward, James Christen. New child: British art and the origins of modern childhood, 1730-1830 (Berkeley: University Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, UC Berkeley, 1995) 40, 85, pl. 12.



Woodfield, Ian. Music of the Raj: A social and economic history of music in late eighteenth-century Anglo-Indian society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 31, pl. 4.

RIdIM record id

6234