Woman and Child Reading, Folio 20 in the John Ludlow Morton Album

Artist/Maker Thomas Sully (1783 - 1872)

Woman and Child Reading, Folio 20 in the John Ludlow Morton Album

1831

Graphite and gray wash on card, bound into an album

Overall: 8 3/16 x 6 15/16 in. (20.8 x 17.6 cm)

Bequest of Emily Ellison Post

1944.384

One of the most prolific portraitists of the nineteenth century, Thomas Sully was also the premier portraitist of antebellum Philadelphia and the period’s most important proponent of the Romantic British portrait style. Born in England, Sully immigrated with his family, a group of actors and performers, to the U.S. in 1792. In Virginia, he found work with relatives as a miniature painter. In 1802 he began to paint in oil and developed his skills in the studio of portraitist Henry Benbridge. He then worked in a studio at New York’s Park Theatre and as an assistant to John Wesley Jarvis (1946.306). Shortly thereafter, Sully moved to Philadelphia, where he resided for the rest of his life. After gaining his citizenship, he spent just under a year in London at the studio of American expatriate Benjamin West, a champion of young American painters. When he returned to Philadelphia, Sully portrayed members of the Pennsylvania and Maryland elite as well as well-known actors, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Queen Victoria. He is particularly recognized for his portraits of women and for his portrayal of the intimate relationship between mother and child, and this quick but elegant sketch reveals the charming and affable nature of Sully’s style. The work is one of twenty-seven drawings of various artist-friends assembled by the artist John Ludlow Morton into an album amicorum (1944.375-276 and 1944.389).

SignedSigned and inscribed at lower right in graphite: "TS.[monogram] 1831."

InscribedInscribed below in brown ink: "T. Sully. 16[sic]831."

ClassificationsDRAWINGS