Minneapolis Institute of Art

Harp

Cousineau Père et Fils

Date

c. 1787–90

Medium

Mahogany, ivory, pigment, gilt, and metal works

Department

European Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

The harp was the most fashionable instrument in late 1700s Paris. Its popularity surely stemmed from the influence of Marie Antoinette, a well-trained musician, patroness of composers, and musical tastemaker who espoused a special love for this instrument. Georges and Jacques-Georges Cousineau, a father-son pair of harp builders, harpists, and music publishers, built this instrument. They are famous for the technological improvements they made to harp pedal mechanisms. Early in Georges’s career, his music shop near the Palais Royal Gardens stocked music engraved by his wife. In 1783, they were appointed as the Queen’s harp makers. The beautiful painting on this instrument demonstrates how harps were intended to both sound and look beautiful. But they also held personal meaning. After Marie Antoinette was guillotined, her first lady-in-waiting, Henriette Campan, tried to obtain the deceased Queen’s musical instruments and scores from the revolutionary government’s cache of confiscated royal property—both out of loyalty to her late mistress, but also out of necessity as she needed them for a school for girls she had opened. France, Europe

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