THOMAS SULLY (1783-1872)
Considered the leading American portraitist of his generation, Sully received early training from both his brother and his brother-in-law who painted miniatures. For technique in portraiture, he studied under the English portraitist Sir Thomas Lawrence and received advice from the American artist Gilbert Stuart.
Thomas Sully, the fourth child of Matthew and Sarah Chester Sully, was born in Horncastle in Lincolnshire, England, June 19, 1783. Member of a large family, his siblings included three brothers and five sisters. His father trained to become a physician, but did not follow a medical profession, since he was more interested in pursuing an acting career. Both parents were involved in the theater as actors. In 1792, when Thomas Sully was nine years old, his family immigrated to America to follow their acting careers, and settled in Richmond, Virginia where Matthew Sully’s brother-in-law was managing theaters. Thomas Sully attended school in New York City until the death of his mother on 1794, at which time he went back to Richmond. By July of that year, the Sully family had moved to Charleston, South Carolina.
In 1795, when Thomas Sully was twelve years old, he was placed in the office of an insurance broker to learn the business. The young Sully was already displaying artistic talent and showed little interest in insurance. An anecdote relates that rather than concentrating on business, Sully sketched men’s and women’s figures and faces. The insurance broker advised Matthew Sully that his son should study art. Whether or not the anecdote is true, Sully was allowed to begin art training as a student of his brother-in-law, Jean Belzons. The Frenchman, who had married one of Thomas Sully’s sisters, was a painter of miniatures. Small portraits, called miniatures, were extremely popular at that time. The arrangement, which included Sully’s living in his sister’s home, ended in 1799 when Sully was sixteen.
By that time, Thomas Sully’s parents had both died and he was on his own. He considered entering the naval service, however his oldest brother, Lawrence, who lived in Richmond, Virginia, offered to take him into his home and continue his art lessons. Lawrence Sully, a painter of miniatures, had married Sarah Annis and was the father of two children. The brothers worked closely together. In 1801, Thomas Sully moved to Norfolk, Virginia with his brother Lawrence’s family. It was there he produced his first miniature painting from life, a portrait of his brother Chester, dated May 10, 1801. That painting is the first entry in the record of Sully’s art production that he labeled “Account of Pictures” and is generally referred to as the ”Register.” Sully was eighteen when he first kept a record of his paintings, and the Register lists ten works sold that year for a total amount of one hundred and eighty dollars.
Near the end of 1803, Lawrence Sully died, leaving a widow and three daughters. Twenty-year-old Thomas Sully was living with the family at the time and, putting aside his hopes of going to Europe to study art there, Sully assumed the responsibility of supporting his brother’s widow and children. His position as head of the family suited him. Thomas Sully and Sarah Annis Sully married on June 27, 1806, two-and-a-half years after his brother’s death.
Sully produced a portrait of his wife, Sarah Annis Sully, 1806. In the three-quarter-length rendition, the pretty young woman is dressed in a puff-sleeved gown and wears a bonnet over her dark hair. An elbow-length glove covers her right hand and forearm, which rests on a shoulder-high ledge. Her bare left hand lightly grips the corner of the ledge. Sarah Sully gazes forward with a gentle expression, her lips curled in a slight smile. She appears to have just returned from an outing and, having removed one long glove, pauses for a moment to chat with her artist-husband. Through the years their family grew in size. Thomas Sully fathered nine children for a total of twelve sons and daughters born to Sarah Sully.
The portraits produced by Sully include those of a number of theatrical people. An English actor, Thomas Abthorpe Cooper, while on a theatrical tour, commissioned Sully to paint his portrait. Cooper suggested that Sully would find more commissions in New York than in Richmond. In November 1806, Sully moved to New York where he produced portraits of a number of actors and actresses of the New York Theater. Cooper also encouraged Sully to visit Boston with a letter of introduction to Andrew Allen written by Cooper. At that particular time, Gilbert Stuart was painting Allen’s portrait. As a result, in July 1807 Sully had his first opportunity to meet the highly successful older artist when he accompanied Allen to Stuart’s studio. Not only was Sully allowed to watch Stuart as he worked on Allen’s portrait, Stuart was generous with his encouragement and advice. Sully spent three weeks studying and learning from Gilbert Stuart. When Sully was twenty-four, he produced seventy paintings that he listed in his Register as producing an income of $3,203 for the year.
In 1808, Sully moved from New York to Philadelphia where he established a studio-residence. Sully had long hoped to travel to Europe for further art training. However with the financial responsibilities placed upon him by his brother’s death and his marriage to his brother’s widow, he was not in a financial position to do so. An opportunity arose to travel to Europe when six friends and art patrons agreed to subscribe two hundred dollars each toward the venture with the stipulation that as repayment each should receive a painting that was a copy of a master’s work. Producing copies of paintings by the old masters was a typical method of developing art skills and technique during that period. Sully agreed. The funds would allow him to stay abroad for nine months.
Sully was twenty-six when he departed for England. The ship set sail from Delaware on June 10, 1809, arriving in Liverpool, England on July 13. When he reached London Sully contacted a friend and fellow-artist, Charles B. King, who had been in England for some time. They agreed to share living accommodations and a painting room. Sully had a letter of introduction to Benjamin West, the expatriate American artist teaching in London. No longer painting portraits, West was devoting his time to historical paintings. He therefore suggested that Sully find a portraitist to study under. Sully was particularly impressed by the work of Sir Thomas Lawrence, to whom he had a letter of introduction.
Sully found it difficult to gain permission to copy paintings in private collections in England and he considered going to France where the practice was more common. He sought the advice of Benjamin West on the matter. To enable Sully to fulfill his obligation to his sponsors, and in the process improve his painting skills, West offered Sully the use of his own private collection of paintings by old masters as well as more current paintings. Sully copied two paintings by West as well as works by Correggio, Raphael and Joshua Reynolds.
The eight months Sully spent in London was both productive and exhausting. He expended a great deal of time and energy painting the copies he had agreed to produce in order to repay his debt to the six subscribers who supplied the funds for his sojourn in England. Sully’s last copy of a master’s painting was completed approximately a week before his return trip to America in March 1810.
That year he produced the portrait entitled The Torn Hat, 1810. The painting of the sweet-faced young lad in a torn hat has great appeal andillustrates Sully’s skill in painting children. In the head and shoulders rendition of a small boy wearing a tan-colored hat, the wide collar of his white shirt tops his high-buttoned green jacket. A section of the down-turned hat brim has separated from the crown. It hangs slightly lower over his left eyebrow, showing the gap. A light source, that spotlights the tip of the boy’s nose and the lower part of his face and neck, shines through the torn part of the brim to leave a spot of light high on the left side of his forehead. The young lad has rosy cheeks and his blue eyes gaze toward the viewer with a sweet expression.
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts named Sully an academician in 1812. He would remain an active member of the Academy as he pursued his highly successful career as an artist. In addition to portraits, Sully produced landscape paintings and scenes based on historical events. In 1812 he painted Capture of Major André, which was produced on commission for an engraver named Mr. Kearney.
Four years later Sully had the opportunity to produce a major historical painting. He was offered a commission by the North Carolina state legislature to produce two paintings of George Washington for the State Capitol at Raleigh. Rather than two smaller pictures, Sully suggested one large canvas depicting Washington crossing the Delaware, to which they agreed. Sully proceeded to paint a rendition of the historic event. The actual crossing of the Delaware took place after nightfall, rather than in daylight, and Sully depicted the event in the semi-darkness of early nightfall.
The winter scene, Washington Crossing the Delaware, c. 1817, depicts an event the occurred during the American Revolution. General George Washington sits astride a white horse, having paused at the top of a snow-dusted bluff on the New Jersey shore. Leading his army south in retreat from a disastrous battle in New York, Washington is depicted in full uniform of dark jacket, beige pants, black hat and boots. Looking composed in the saddle, he is half-turned toward his troops coming ashore and ascending the slope. Part of his army of over two thousand soldiers plus artillery is arriving in long, low boats. Near the top of the bluff, a soldier in winter coat helps guide a large cannon being pushed up the grade. Several officers, riding brown horses, had come to a standstill near Washington. They have been tentatively identified. One, shown pointing a long sword in the direction from which they came, is thought to be General Henry Knox. In the foreground, General Nathanial Green, a figure seen from the back wearing a long, gray winter coat over his uniform, grabs the reins of the brown horse he is about to mount. Of the two other men on horseback near Washington, one is thought to be Washington’s assistant William Lee, and the other an officer assumed to be General John Sullivan. The setting is a bleak landscape. In the distance, a small soft pink glow on the horizon indicates where the sun has set, and above that touch of pink, gray clouds sweep across the sky. A long, snow-covered slope angles down to the icy river and helps convey the bitter cold of winter.
Unfortunately, the dimensions of the available wall space at the State Capitol were not made clear to Sully and when his 17 foot by 12 foot painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware, was completed it was too large to be hung in the designated location. The painting was admired by Doggett, a Boston frame maker, who paid five hundred dollars for it rather than the one thousand dollars Sully expected to receive from the State of North Carolina. The large canvas was later given to the Boston Museum.
The portraits Sully produced, after studying under Sir Lawrence in England, include Lady with a Harp: Eliza Ridgely, 1818. In the painting, a young woman stands beside a tall harp. Her brown hair is parted in the middle with long curls framing her pretty face. There is a slight smile on her lips and her large, brown eyes gaze off slightly to the right. She wears a full-length white satin gown that has a low neckline and small puffed sleeves. A long turquoise green scarf, draped over her right shoulder, hangs down her back then reappears at hip level where it trails down past her long white skirt before looping back over the round red velvet seat of a stool behind her and on down to the floor. Most of her right arm is hidden behind the tall, ornately carved wooden neck of the harp. The fingers of her right hand curl around a projection near the top. With the long, narrow fingers of her left hand, she plucks the harp strings. Behind her, a low balustrade and two tall pillars frame a landscape scene that includes a sky filled with dark clouds. The calm expression of the young woman and the suggested strains of delicate music from the harp are heightened by the contrast of an impending storm.
A hip-length portrait entitled, Major Thomas Biddle, 1818, depicts a handsome military man in dress uniform. He has reddish-blond hair and blue eyes. The soldier stands erect and gazes off to one side. His gray uniform jacket is designed with an elbow-length cape topped by gold epaulets at the shoulders and there are small gold buttons down the front of the open jacket. Larger gold buttons close his black inner jacket or vest. A white belt with a large gold buckle tops the bright red cummerbund around his waist. Wearing beige gloves or gauntlets, his right hand rests on his hip. A brown leather strap hangs over his left arm. Because his arms are bent at the elbow, both gauntlets are shown at the bottom of the composition. Sunset-tinged clouds, with small patches of blue sky, form the background behind the impressively uniformed military man.
Thomas Sully produced the portraits of a number of leading citizens of his day. A painting entitled Governor Charles Ridgely of Maryland, 1820, presents a three-quarter view of the gray-haired gentleman. The governor sits facing forward in a straight-backed chair with red velvet padded arms. A high-necked white shirt relieves the stark black of his attire. Under heavy brows, his deep blue eyes gaze outward. The warm flesh tones of his face deepen to a rosy glow on his cheeks and chin. Light that enters the picture from the left side, illuminating the man’s face, is softly reflected on the brown paneling behind him. A sword gleams on a low table and a heavy red drape hangs bunched in a flounce in the upper left corner, and then falls in a sweeping curve behind the governor’s right shoulder.
Of the portraits Sully produced of members of his family, The Torn Hat c.1820, is particularly appealing. It is a painting of Thomas Wilcocks Sully, the artist’s son, produced when the boy was ten years old. The portrait is a head and shoulders study of the young boy wearing a slouch hat that shades the upper part of his face, casting a shadow across his left cheek. The open collar of his white shirt spreads out over the shoulders of his light-blue jacket. In the rather small painting, nineteen inches by fourteen-and-a-half inches, Sully captures the sweet expression of a young child who looks directly at the viewer from under the drooping brim of his well-worn hat. It is a charmingly informal portrait of a handsome small boy.
Sully received commissions to paint eleven portraits for the United States Military Academy at West Point between 1815 and 1839. Among them are paintings of two presidents, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe. Sully, in 1921, painted a half-length portrait of Jefferson at Monticello, his home in Virginia. For the sitting, Jefferson wore a large collared tan topcoat over a dark suit, white shirt and tie with a touch of red at the neck. Jefferson, depicted against a soft yellow to gray cloud effect background, gazes off to one side with a soft expression as though deep in thought. Sully’s portrait of James Monroe c. 1817, a head and shoulders study, has the same type of background. In the three-quarter view, gray-haired Monroe wears a high-collared black jacket and white shirt with a soft ruffle at the neck opening. Monroe, with a slight smile, looks directly forward. Sully also produced full-length paintings of the presidents, in which, for James Monroe’s portrait, Sully painted him in the clothing Monroe wore some years before during his inauguration as president of the United States.
Although Sully visited other locations in the process of producing commissioned portraits, he chose to make his permanent home in Philadelphia, where he was an influential artist and sought-after portraitist. In 1826 Sully and his large family moved into a three-story brick house on Fifth Street where he would live and work throughout the rest of his life. The house belonged to Stephen Girard who made renovations to suit the artist, including adding a large window in Sully’s studio painting room.
Sully’s commissioned portraiture included paintings of children. In the group portrait, The Vanderkemp Children, 1832, only the girl on the right looks toward the viewer. The color of her short, straight, reddish-brown hair is repeated in her long-sleeved, scoop-necked gown. Her left arm is extended toward the lower center of the painting where she holds a ribbon connected to a large brown book or portfolio. Engraved on the cover are the initials T.S. and the date 1832. The blond-haired younger girl in the center wears a peach-colored dress. She faces forward but looks toward the smaller child who appears to sit on her lap. Her right arm encircles the child’s waist, her hand appearing just behind the little one’s rounded elbow. The youngest child has reddish-blond hair. Pale-yellow shoulder straps have slipped to circle the chubby arms. While holding one side of the portfolio with a small hand, the youngest child points with the other hand to the opening edge of the large brown cover, smiling in anticipation.
Sully continued to paint individuals who were well-known theatrical performers. The beautiful young woman in the portrait, Frances Anne Kemble as Beatrice, 1833, is identified as an actress by the title of the painting. In 1832, Fanny Kemble came to America from England with her father, Charles Kemble, who was a close friend of Sir Thomas Lawrence. Sully painted portraits of the actress dressed in costume for her various roles including “Bianca,” “Juliet,” and “Beatrice.” In the portrait of her dressed for the title role in Shakespeare’s “Beatrice,” she is posed in a three-quarters back view and shown from the waist up. The head of the woman is turned so that she gazes directly at the viewer with large brown eyes under the sweeping curve of her dark brows. A narrow gold headband follows the curve of her brows and disappears into the brown curls that frame her lovely face. Her cheeks are rosy and her gently smiling lips are a soft red that matches the color of the reddish-orange scarf draped around one shoulder. Her left hand is tucked under her chin. The full white sleeve of her low-backed dress hides the elbow of the arm projecting toward the viewer. The white of her dress changes to a dove-gray color near the bottom of the canvas, where it is painted with loose brushstrokes. Both the date, 1833, and Sully’s initials T.S. are painted in red in the lower right corner of the painting, with the S close against the stem of the T. The signature initials are referred to as his cipher.
In October 1837, when Sully was fifty-five, he was commissioned by the Society of the Sons of St. George in Philadelphia to paint a portrait of the recently crowned Queen Victoria. Twenty-seven years had passed since Sully first traveled to England to study art. When he arrived in London to fulfill the commission by painting the Queen from life, he had some difficulty gaining the Queen’s permission to paint her portrait. Following a period of waiting, during which time Sully produced four other portraits, Queen Victoria agreed to sit for the artist.
Work on the queen’s portrait was commenced in England on March 22, 1838. A more complete title ascribed to the painting is Portrait of Her Majesty The Queen in her Robes of State Ascending the Throne in the House of Lords. In the full-length portrait, the eighteen-year-old queen is shown in a back view. She looks over her right shoulder as she reaches the top step to her throne. The queen wears a jeweled crown on her brown hair. Parted in the middle, the dark hair frames her pretty, oval-shaped face. Her jewelry includes a necklace and pendent earrings. Over her full-length, formal gown, her long fur-trimmed robes of state trail behind her down the steps.
Sully’s twenty-one-year-old daughter, Blanche, accompanied him to London and was present at sittings for Queen Victoria’s portrait. Thomas Sully produced several paintings of the Queen. In addition to the full-length commissioned portrait, which was actually completed after his return to America, he painted a portrait study of her head only, plus a three-quarters length portrait for the engraving firm of Hodgson and Graves from which an engraving plate was made. In addition to the two paintings completed during sittings with the Queen, Sully made a number of small working studies in the process of developing the final works of art.
Before returning to America, Sully traveled from England to France. After arriving in Paris, in July 1838, he visited museums including the Louvre. He was particularly impressed with paintings by Peter Paul Rubens. Sully left Europe the early part of August to return to America.
Back in his Fifth Street studio in Philadelphia, he produced the full-length portrait of Queen Victoria, working from his studies made during her live sittings in London. He completed the commissioned portrait for St. George’s Society on January 14, 1839. In Philadelphia, Sully took an active part as a member and secretary of the Society of Artists of the United States until it was disbanded. He also served as a Director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for fifteen years.
As Thomas Sully’s fame grew, he was in great demand as a portraitist. In the group portrait, The Coleman Sisters, 1844, three attractive young women are grouped closely together at one end of a small table. They have shiny dark hair and brown eyes. The woman standing in profile on the left has turned her head so that her face is shown in three-quarter view. A slight smile curves her lips. Her smooth brown hair, parted in the middle, falls in three long curls on each side of her face. She wears a pale blue dress and a deep-red velvet cape. The curved fingers of her right hand hold a red book, one edge of which rests on the gold tablecloth. On the right side of the close grouping, the seated sister faces forward. She is perhaps the prettiest of the three and wears a rather serious look of confidence. Her long-sleeved, lavender satin gown has a ruffle of white lace at the neckline. She rests one elbow on the table and the fingers of her hand toy with the end of one long curl of her nearly black hair. Standing in the middle, between her two siblings, is the third sister dressed in pale yellow. Rather than styled in long curls, her slightly lighter-brown hair is pulled rather severely back to cover her ears. She has an arm around the shoulders of the sister she stands beside and gazes fondly toward her. Her expression is soft and gentle and loving. The group portrait captures more than the likenesses of the three women. It reveals the relationship between them.
Sully was in his eighties when the city of Philadelphia made plans to widen Ranstead Street between Fourth and Fifth Streets, an act that would have demolished the artist’s home. The ordinance was repealed and adjusted to allow Sully to remain in his home until he died. Sully had occupied the house for nearly forty years.
During his final years, Sully continued to paint. A prolific artist, the number of paintings produced throughout Sully’s long career number two thousand, six hundred and thirty-one, as recorded in the Register he kept of all the paintings he produced over the years. More than two thousand of the paintings listed were portraits.
Thomas Sully also wrote Hints to Young Painters, detailing advice concerning painting technique that he felt would be helpful to other artists. The book was not published during his lifetime. The first draft was written in 1851 and revised by Sully in 1871, but not published until 1873, a year after he died. In the manuscript, Sully chronicled his approach to painting portraits. He went into great detail concerning flesh tone colors and shadows describing exactly which hues to use. Sully also made general comments on portraiture and advised that, although capturing a resemblance of the sitter was essential, no complaint would be made by the sitter if a slightly flattering rendition were produced. In Sully’s opinion, the mouth was the most important feature in capturing a likeness, as recorded in his book, Hints to Young Painters.
Thomas Sully, who survived his wife by five years, lived to be almost ninety. His daughter, Blanche, looked after him during his final years. Sully painted until his late eighties. His last portrait, listed in his “Account of Pictures,” generally referred to as the Register, was completed October 31, 1871. Sully died approximately one year later, on November 5, 1872, at age eighty-nine.