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)
Gallery Label:
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