Mother and Child,
After 1827
Thomas Sully
(1783-1872)
View Artist Bio
Oil on canvas
24 1/8 x 30 inches
Status: Available
Born in England to actor parents, Thomas Sully began his artistic career painting miniatures in Charleston, South Carolina. He later received advice from such established artists as Henry Benbridge, John Trumbull and Gilbert Stuart before returning to England for a year of study with Sir Thomas Lawrence and others. Sully settled in Philadelphia in 1810, where he soon established himself as America’s leading portraitist, a reputation he maintained for more than fifty years.
Sully was to American art what Lawrence was in England, the creator of a romantic style of portraiture--elegant, refined, reflective and immensely popular. Indeed, he was arguably the most admired portraitist of the Romantic era in the United States. Over the course of his long career, Sully produced over twenty-six hundred works, approximately two thousand of which were portraits. The remainder were landscapes, genre and thematic figurative works Sully termed “fancy pictures,” paintings intended for the decoration of the drawing rooms and parlors of his wealthy clients. A sleeping baby, with or without its mother, was one of the artist’s favorite “fancy” subjects.
One of Sully’s most captivating images, Mother and Child represents a vision that is at once chaste and sensuous, a combination that had great appeal in the first half of the nineteenth century. As Edgar P. Richardson observed, “one of the distinctive notes of Romanticism was a love of the poetry of the actual, the charm of the ordinary experience, the quiet days and the simple things of which the world is made.” (Richardson, p. 158). It is a sentiment favorable to images of childhood innocence and the maternal spirit. Sully’s debt to eighteenth century English portraiture in general, and to Lawrence in particular, is evident in both the bravura brushwork (noted especially in the exquisite handling of the fabrics) and the rich coloration. The entire canvas breathes an air of delicate refinement, order and stability, typical of the idealistic era of Thomas Jefferson.
In this example, Sully has placed the figures on a blue Chippendale sofa, the woman asleep, the child playful, as if the artist had interrupted an intimate moment. The mother is adorned in the latest style of the season: a white off-the-shoulder dress, and a blue and white turban, draped beguilingly to one side. With eyes averted from the viewer, she rests on a pale gold shawl, her classic profile silhouetted against a dark background, her left arm clasping the wide awake child. With eyes directed arrestingly at the viewer, the child reaches forward with his left arm and seems to penetrate the viewer’s space. The painting’s fluid, elegant lines serve to reinforce the bond between the two. The viewer’s eye moves easily from the child’s outstretched hand to its face, then travels up the woman’s bare shoulder and neck to the head, which rests gracefully against a creamy-white pillow. Sully’s soft modeling, sunny coloring and skillful handling of light give the picture freshness and a sense of immediacy.
Sully often replicated popular subjects, and, indeed, his register lists several images titled Mother and Child. Among the first was one executed in 1827 for Colonel James A. Stevens of Hoboken, New Jersey. According to Ken Myers, an art and cultural historian and professor at Middlebury College, Stevens commissioned the painting for the main salon of his steamboat, the Albany, one of the most celebrated ships of the day. Built in Philadelphia in 1827, the boat plied the Hudson River from New York to Albany and was considered the finest vessel of its kind. Stevens provided an art gallery for the pleasure of his passengers and filled it with examples by his favorite artists. A total of twelve paintings hung in the stateroom, each in oil on mahogany and measuring 27 x 44 inches. In addition to the Sully, there was a replica of John Vanderlyn’s notorious nude Ariadne, as well as works by Thomas Cole, Thomas Doughty, Samuel F. B. Morse, Thomas Birch and Charles B. Lawrence (Richard York Gallery, Sully file). One observer wrote in 1857, “Sully produced a reclining half-length of a young and beautiful mother asleep, and, of course, unmindful of her lovely infant lying awake and playful at her side. This was a warm and glowing picture, and one characteristic of the grace and refinement of this accomplished artist” (The Crayon, p.181).
Of the five known examples of the subject, the Stevens version is the only one on wood panel; the four replicas are executed in oil on canvas. One example is in the collection of the Butler Institute of Art, Youngstown, Ohio, the gift of Dr. John McDonough. The others, including this one, are privately owned (Charleston Renaissance Gallery, Sully file). The Stevens version is signed and dated 1827; the others are unsigned and undated. Recent scholarship identifies the version owned by the Butler Institute as the one commissioned by Dr. Philip Tidyman, a work begun on February 10, 1827 and completed on August 3, 1827. The latter date, along with Sully’s initials, is inscribed on the picture’s stretcher. Sully refers to the Tidyman picture as a “copy” of the painting created for Colonel Stevens in his register (Biddle and Fielding, p. 371). The three remaining works were painted after 1827, but how much later is unknown. Nancy Rivard Shaw, 2000
References
Biddle, Edward, and Mantle Fielding. The Life and Works of Thomas Sully. New York: DaCapo Press, 1970.
“Notes and Queries,” The Crayon 4 (May 1857), as quoted in Master Paintings from the Butler Institute. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994, pp. 44 - 45.
Charleston Renaissance Gallery, Charleston, SC. Sully file.
Richard York Gallery, New York. Information sheet on Thomas Sully’s Mother and Child.
Richardson, Edgar P. Painting in America: From 1502 to the Present. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1956.
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This essay is copyrighted by the Charleston Renaissance Gallery and may not be reproduced or transmitted without written permission from Robert M. Hicklin Jr., Inc.