14th Anniversary Preview

14th Anniversary 14 www.antiquesandfineart.com HIGHLIGHT S Thomas Sully: Painted Performance February 7–May 11, 2014 San Antonio Museum of Art, 200 West Jones Ave., San Antonio, Tex. For information call 210.978.8100 or visit www.samuseum.org Romantic painter Thomas Sully (1783–1872) was one of nineteenth century America’s most prolific artists. In addition to his portraits of war heroes and politicians, he had a vigorous interest in subject pictures that centered on theater, literature, and fairy tales. Conditions of theatricality and performance mark his oeuvre, characteristics generated by his personal history, defined by the types of works he created, and confirmed by the ways in which his audiences could receive his paintings. The theatricality of Sully’s paintings extends beyond subject matter. It also imbues his method of working and the ways in which his sitters perform. Sully orchestrated drama, performance, and a heightened sense of activity to great effect throughout his long career. Born into the theatre, literally and figuratively, Sully’s parents, Matthew and Sarah Sully, were working actors, who brought their family to the United States from Great Britain in 1792. Sully himself performed on the stage, in 1794 when he was recorded as entertaining audiences between scenes by tumbling with his brothers. Sully’s “theatricality” was surely rooted in his formative experience watching people play parts for a living, trying on different roles that changed from day to day, depending on the bill. Now, in the first retrospective exhibition of the artist in thirty years, Sully’s unique relationship to the world of the stage and its tenets is brought to the foreground through the presentation of seventy-three works from forty-eight public and private lenders in the United States and Great Britain. The exhibition was organized by and opened at the Milwaukee Art Museum. It is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue of the same name by Dr. William Keyse Rudolph and Dr. Carol Eaton Soltis (Yale University Press, 2013). TOP RIGHT Thomas Sully (1783–1872), Prison Scene from J. Fenimore Cooper’s “The Pilot”: Ceceilia Howard and Katherine Plowden Arousing the Prisoner Edward Griffith from His Slumber, 1841. Oil on canvas, 37 x 28 in. Birmingham Museum of Art, Museum purchase in honor of Richard Murray, former director, with funds provided by Dr. Walter Clark, EBSCO Industries, Mr. John Jemison, Jr., Dr. Cameron McDonald, Dr. John Poyner, Mrs. Alys R. Stephens, Mr. Elton B. Stephens, Jr., Mr. Crawford L. Taylor, Jr., and the 1984 Museum Dinner and Ball (1984.67). BOTTOM RIGHT Thomas Sully (1783–1872), Child on the Sea Side, 1828. Oil on canvas. 56½ x 36½ in. The Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia (1954.1885).