Thomas Sully: From the Stage to the Studio

A brief tribute to Anglo-American portrait painter Thomas Sully (1783-1872), chiefly owing to his theatrical connections.

Both of Sully’s parents were actors; his aunt Margaretta Sully was married to Thomas Wade West, an actor-manager who ran companies in Richmond, Charleston, and elsewhere throughout the south (Margaretta took over management when her husband died in 1799). Sully was nine when his family emigrated from England to join the Wests. As a boy he performed for a time as a tumbler and a supernumerary in the family troupe, but at the same time his skills as a visual artist were becoming apparent, and that was what he chose to focus on.

In his early 20s, Sully moved to New York, then Boston, then Philadelphia, where he lived out the rest of his life, though he also studied for a time in London. His teachers included Gilbert Stuart and Benjamin West; he was also friends with Charles Bird King, and was known for painting in the style of Thomas Lawrence. He was known in his day as “the American Lawrence”. I flirted with making that the sub-headline of this post, but decided that it would be meaningless to nearly all contemporary readers.

In 1824, Sully painted John Quincy Adams and the Marquis de Lafayette, and these twin triumphs were the making of his subsequent career. Other famous subjects included Queen Victoria,Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Gilbert Stuart, and actors Fanny Kemble, George Frederick Cooke,and Charlotte Cushman (the latter of whom Sully’s daughter Rosalie is said to have had a romantic relationship with). Sully also painted Shakespeare (based on earlier works obviously) as well as famous scenes from several of his plays. His most famous picture on a historical theme is The Passage of the Delaware (1819) which depicts Washington overseeing the famous river crossing on horseback.

Sully’s nephew Robert Matthew Sully (1803-1855) was also a portrait painter; he studied at the Royal Academy in London. He was lifelong friends with Edgar Allan Poe (whom he sketched, but the drawings are lost). He also sketched the philosopher Jeremy Bentham and was commissioned to paint several notable Native Americans.

One of Thomas Sully’s granddaughters, Mary Sully, married Philip Deloria, or Black Lodge, who was part Yankton Dakota Sioux. Their daughter Susan (1896-1963) also took on the name of Mary Sully and also became a distinguished artist. She was only one of Thomas Sully’s notable descendants, though to explore them here would take us too far from the post’s original spark, which was Sully’s connection to the theatre.