Thomas Sully was an American portrait painter in the United States.
18 Facts About Thomas Sully
2.
Thomas Sully's subjects included national political leaders such as United States presidents: Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson, Revolutionary War hero General Marquis de Lafayette, and many leading musicians and composers.
3.
Thomas Sully's work was adapted for use on United States coinage.
4.
Thomas Sully made his first appearance in the theater as a tumbler at the age of 11 in Charleston.
5.
Thomas Sully studied with his brother-in-law Jean Belzons, a French miniaturist, until they had a falling-out in 1799.
6.
Between 1801 and 1802, Thomas Sully lived in Norfolk, Virginia, the city from which his aunt Margaretta Thomas Sully West ran her theater and opera company.
7.
Thomas Sully became a professional painter at age 18 in 1801, while living in Norfolk, Virginia, with his brother Lawrence.
8.
In 1805, Thomas Sully married his brother's widow, Sarah Sully.
9.
In 1809 Thomas Sully traveled to London for nine months of study under the American Benjamin West, who had established his painting career in Great Britain.
10.
One of Sully's portraits of Thomas Jefferson is owned by the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society at the University of Virginia and hangs in that school's rotunda.
11.
In Philadelphia Thomas Sully taught portrait painting to Marcus Aurelius Root, who later became an internationally successful daguerreotypist.
12.
Thomas Sully was one of the founding members of The Musical Fund Society in Philadelphia.
13.
Thomas Sully painted the portraits of many of the musicians and composers who were members.
14.
In 1835, Thomas Sully was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.
15.
Thomas Sully died in Philadelphia on November 5,1872 and was interred in Laurel Hill Cemetery.
16.
Thomas Sully's paintings are held and displayed permanently in many of the world's leading art museums.
17.
Two of Thomas Sully's portraits hang in the chambers of the Dialectic and Philanthropic societies of the University of North Carolina.
18.
The Thomas Sully painting Portrait of Anna and Harriet Coleman was sold at auction in 2013 for $145,000.