Thomas Sully

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Self-portrait, oil on canvas

Thomas Sully (born June 19, 1783 in Horncastle , Lincolnshire , † November 5, 1872 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania ) was an American painter of the 19th century .

Life

Thomas Sully was the son of the actor couple Matthew and Sarah Sully. In March 1792, the Sully family emigrated with their nine children to Richmond , Virginia - where his uncle ran a theater. Thomas Sully was attending school in New York City when his mother died in 1794 and he returned to Richmond. Soon after, the family moved to Charleston , South Carolina . After a brief training as an insurance broker, where his artistic talent was recognized, Sully began painting at the age of about 12. Sully studied painting with the famous portrait painter Gilbert Stuart in Boston and then went to Virginia to learn the art of miniature painting from his brother-in-law, Jean Belzons . In 1799 he was back in Richmond and worked with his older brother, Lawrence Sully (1769-1804), in a studio. After his brother's death, Sully married his widowed sister-in-law Sarah Annis Sully. In addition to the children from the first marriage, there were six more children from the joint relationship, Alfred , Mary, Jane, Blanche, Rosalie and Thomas Wilcocks. He moved the family to Philadelphia around 1806.

In 1809 Thomas Sully traveled to England , where he studied and worked in London at the Royal Academy of Arts under Benjamin West . On his return to Philadelphia he made several portraits from politics and society, including John Quincy Adams , Marie-Joseph Motier, Marquis de La Fayette and Thomas Jefferson .

Thomas Sully was one of the first honorary members ( Honorary NA ) to be elected by the newly founded National Academy of Design in 1827 . Between 1837 and 1838 he was back in England and portrayed the young Queen Victoria on behalf of Philadelphia's St. George's Society . His daughter Blanche assisted him and stood model when the queen was not available. Thomas Sully created high-contrast, colorful, idealizing pictures based on the example of the English portrait painters Sir Thomas Lawrence and Benjamin West.

Worth mentioning

  • Edgar Allan Poe describes in his story The oval portrait the very life-like image of a young woman and says that it was "very similar in style to the heads", "as Sully likes to paint them".
  • His book Tips for Young Painters was published after his death.
  • His son, Alfred Sully, was a Brigadier General in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
  • John Neagle married Mary Chester Sully, the niece and stepdaughter of Thomas Sully, in 1826.
  • Sully is the great-uncle of the architect Thomas Sully (1855–1939).

Works (selection)

  • Portrait of Katharine Matthews, oil on canvas, 1812/13

  • Portrait of Margaret Siddons Kintzing, oil on canvas, 1812

  • Portrait of Queen Victoria, oil on canvas, 1837/1838

  • Portrait of Queen Victoria, oil on canvas, 1837/1838

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ nationalacademy.org: Past Academicians "S" / Sully, Honorary 1827 ( Memento of the original from March 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on July 17, 2015) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nationalacademy.org

literature

  • Carrie Rebora Barratt: Queen Victoria and Thomas Sully . Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 2000, ISBN 0-691-07034-2 .
  • John Clubbe: Byron, Sully, and the Power of Portraiture. Thomas Sully and His Byron . Ashgate, Aldershot et al. 2005, ISBN 0-7546-3814-6 ( The Nineteenth Century Series ).
  • Edward Biddle and Mantle Fielding: The life and works of Thomas Sully <1783-1872> This book is limited to an Edition of Five Hundred copies, of which 450 are printed in quarto, 50 on large paper. Publisher The Wickenham Press, Philadelphia Published 1921

Web links

Commons : Thomas Sully  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Sully, Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American painter
DATE OF BIRTH June 19, 1783
PLACE OF BIRTH Horncastle , Lincolnshire
DATE OF DEATH November 5, 1872
Place of death Philadelphia , Pennsylvania