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Miss Cunningham Holding Her King Charles Spaniel

A work made of black chalk, charcoal, and gouache, with stumping, scratching, and erasing, heightened with white chalk, on ivory laid paper, laid down.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

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  • A work made of black chalk, charcoal, and gouache, with stumping, scratching, and erasing, heightened with white chalk, on ivory laid paper, laid down.

Date:

1770

Artist:

Robert Healy
Irish, 1743-1771

About this artwork

A promising artist from the Dublin Drawing Schools, Robert Healy left behind a small but exquisite body of work when he died at age 27. He focused on drawing and pastel and soon became extraordinarily accomplished at making grisaille (monochrome) compositions like this one. The artist completed Miss Cunningham Holding Her King Charles Spaniel near the end of his life, portraying Surgeon General Alexander Cunningham’s daughter. Healy’s delicate use of white chalk conveys the girl’s youth and innocence; she appears oddly vulnerable against the ominous darkness of the wooded background, alluding to the tensions between humanity and nature embodied in Ireland’s history.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Prints and Drawings

Artist

Robert Healy

Title

Miss Cunningham Holding Her King Charles Spaniel

Place

Ireland (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1770

Medium

Black chalk, charcoal, and gouache, with stumping, scratching, and erasing, heightened with white chalk, on ivory laid paper, laid down

Dimensions

58.4 × 42.2 cm (23 × 16 5/8 in.)

Credit Line

Regenstein Endowment Fund

Reference Number

2009.682

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/200764/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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