Oil paint on canvas
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<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/james-northcote-404" aria-label="More by James Northcote" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">James Northcote</a>
A Young Lady Playing Harp
Presented in memory of Frank Lloyd by his daughter Mrs Garwood 1927
actions: expressive
actions: postures and motions
adults
clothing and personal items
fine arts and music
hill
individuals: female
instrument, harp
landscape
leisure and pastimes
music
music and entertainment
necklace
objects
people
portraits
sitting
smiling
sunset
times of the day
woman
wooded
<p><span>A Young Lady Playing the Harp</span> ?exhibited 1814 is an oil painting by the English artist and author James Northcote. It depicts a young harpist wearing a white dress tied with a long green sash, with a string of red beads around her neck. The harpist gazes forward, both hands raised to pluck the strings. She is seated against a rural backdrop dominated by a large, dark tree on the right, which frames her compositionally. The backdrop on the left, seen through the strings of the harp, features a twilit sky over hills and a lake.</p>
painting oil paint canvas
27 September 2014 – 6 April 2015
2015-04-06
27 September 2014 – 6 April 2015
2015-04-06
2014-09-27
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2014-09-27
William Hazlitt
Collection based display
26 September 2022
26 September 2022
2022-09-26
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2022-09-26
Gallery 15
Collection based display
A Young Lady Playing the Harp
support: 1105 × 864 mm
Presented in memory of Frank Lloyd by his daughter Mrs Garwood 1927
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<i>A Young Lady Playing the Harp</i> ?exhibited 1814 is an oil painting by the English artist and author James Northcote. It depicts a young harpist wearing a white dress tied with a long green sash, with a string of red beads around her neck. The harpist gazes forward, both hands raised to pluck the strings. She is seated against a rural backdrop dominated by a large, dark tree on the right, which frames her compositionally. The backdrop on the left, seen through the strings of the harp, features a twilit sky over hills and a lake.</p>
<p>This painting has been identified as the ‘Portrait of a lady playing the harp’ that was listed under Northcote’s name in the Royal Academy exhibition catalogue for 1814 (<i>The Exhibition of the Royal Academy</i>, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy, London 1814, p.10, no.166). However, it is not known exactly when the painting was made. Northcote presumably painted it in his London studio. The identity of the sitter is unknown, but the scene is typical of a group of artworks produced during this period that portray women playing or holding musical instruments, the likes of which would have appealed to the cultured, well-to-do classes visiting the Royal Academy. Northcote’s teacher Sir Joshua Reynolds had adopted a similar composition in his painting <i>The Countess</i> <i>of Eglinton</i> 1777 (private collection), depicting the harp-playing countess in front of a landscape punctuated by classical pillars. Another example is Thomas Lawrence’s full-length portrait <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/lawrence-miss-laura-dorothea-ross-mrs-francis-robertson-n00136">Miss </a><a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/lawrence-miss-laura-dorothea-ross-mrs-francis-robertson-n00136">Laura </a><a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/lawrence-miss-laura-dorothea-ross-mrs-francis-robertson-n00136">Dorothea Ross (Mrs Francis Robertson)</a><i> </i>c.1798–1804 (Tate). Such representations of women in the act of music-making were strongly idealised, reinforcing a then commonplace association between femininity and such ‘polite’ pursuits as art, literature and music, through which a family’s taste and refinement could be shown off. This ideal underpinned the expectation that women from upper-class families should study music and attain accomplishment at playing musical instruments from a young age – as evoked by the particularly youthful appearance of the sitter for Northcote’s painting.</p>
<p>The composition of the painting’s landscape background is loosely similar to that of Northcote’s earlier portrait<i> A Lady Wearing a White Dress </i>1795 (Victoria and Albert Museum, London), in which the subject is also accompanied by a large tree in the background and a picturesque landscape on the left. However, while the figure in the earlier portrait appears to be indoors, the sitter in <i>A Young Lady Playing the Harp</i> looks to be outside, immersed in the landscape, evoking an association between music and idyllic landscapes that was common in British art and literature during the Romantic period of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.</p>
<p>Having moved from his hometown of Plymouth to London in 1771, Northcote undertook a five-year apprenticeship to Sir Joshua Reynolds. In <i>A Young Lady Playing the Harp</i>, Northcote appears to have paid particular attention to the rendering of the young woman’s clothing and the drapery of her skirt, a skill he learned from Reynolds; as the art historian Martin Postle notes, during his apprenticeship Northcote completed the drapery and other details for portraits by Reynolds including <i>James Calthorpe</i> 1773 (private collection) and <i>James Beattie</i> 1774 (University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen) (Postle 2008). Northcote dabbled in history painting, small-scale fancy pictures and illustrations to works of literature. He was also well known as a writer, for instance authoring the two-volume <i>Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds</i> (1813–15) along with other art historical and art theoretical works. However, portraiture seems to have been his steadiest source of employment as an artist. Among his other portrait subjects were, notably, Napoleon (1801) (location unknown), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1804; Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth Museum, Grasmere), the infant John Ruskin (1822; National Portrait Gallery, London) and Ira Aldridge (1826; Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester). <i>A Young Lady Playing the Harp</i> came relatively late in Northcote’s artistic career, though at a time when he was still exhibiting annually at the Royal Academy and in other exhibitions across Britain.</p>
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<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Martin Postle, ‘Northcote, James (1746–1831)’, <i>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography</i>,<i> </i>Oxford 2008.</p>
<p>Caroline Anjali Ritchie<br/>June 2022</p>
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Summary
2022-07-29T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
actions: expressive actions: postures and motions adults clothing and personal items fine arts and music hill individuals: female instrument, harp landscape leisure and pastimes music music and entertainment necklace objects people portraits sitting smiling sunset times of the day woman wooded