Harris, John (McKechnie Section 1)

Recorded by Jackson (Dictionary) as T. Harris, cutter, working in 1827. She says that Coke owned a silhouette of William IV. This, if taken in 1827, must have been entitled as a portrait of the Duke of Clarence. I can find no reference to this example in any of Coke's works, nor was it apparently included in the sale (July 1931) of the remainder of his collection. It seems more likely that this silhouette was the work of John Harris the younger, recorded by Foskett. Harris entered the Royal Academy Schools on 10 January 1812, aged twenty, and is known to have worked in several fields of art, including miniatures, genre pictures, and portraits; he is also listed by Benezit as an engraver. He might well have produced a good silhouette of the Duke of Clarence as a 'stock' silhouette. He died on 28 December 1873.

Jackson describes the silhouette in question as 'very delicate work in black and gold with elaborate detail'. This does seem like the work of a man who was competent in other categories of painting. The silhouette was probably signed; in a signature of the early nineteenth century the initial T can easily be confused with J.