Painted in Philadelphia in 1839, the work’s full title of “Elizabeth Huddell Cook (later Elizabeth Huddell Cook Bache, 1815–1898) as The Country Girl” signals that this is both likeness and role. American artist Thomas Sully stages an upper-class sitter inside a pastoral “type,” using bonnet, basket, and simple wrap as shorthand for innocence, health, and rural virtue, while the pristine fabrics and satin ribbons quietly reveal this as performance rather than documentary labor. Her double identity can be a kind of social self-fashioning via a portrait that offers a socially admired version of womanhood that is approachable, “natural,” and serene without surrendering dignity or presence. Her direct, steady look complicates the costume’s sweetness because she isn’t merely displayed, but Elizabeth appears aware of being seen. In Sully’s hands, the pastoral becomes a language for aspiration and storytelling, where character and biography overlap … and where a woman’s public image is crafted with both softness and control. In her early 20s, Elizabeth is depicted as a young woman with light skin and dark, glossy hair facing forward in a three-quarter pose, her head gently tilted as she meets our gaze with calm, composed warmth. Soft blush gathers in her cheeks and her lips are lightly tinted while her features are smoothly modeled with delicate shadow. A broad, pale-pink bonnet frames her face as long satin ribbons trail down toward her shoulder. Over her upper body she wears a creamy white capelet that opens at the front to reveal a darker brown dress beneath. Her left arm carries a woven straw basket held close against her torso. Behind her, a wide sky fades from warm peach near the horizon into cool blue, with a suggestion of distant water or low hills for an airy backdrop that makes her figure feel luminous and gently idealized.

“Elizabeth Huddell Cook as The Country Girl” by Thomas Sully (American) - Oil on canvas / 1839 - Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, Connecticut) #WomenInArt #ThomasSully #Sully #YaleUniversityArtGallery #AmericanArt #19thCenturyArt #art #artText #artwork #PortraitofaGirl #AmericanArtist #Yale

Thomas Sully #thomassully

‘Thomas Sully’s Philadelphians’ Review: A City in Portraiture The English-born painter depicted leaders of what was then the nation’s cultural capital.

"Mr. Conn’s book will be a useful guide to anyone hoping to catch a glimpse of the Liberty Bell during the semiquincentennial."

Read D.G. Hart's @wsj.com review of Thomas Sully's Philadelphians by Peter Conn at the link.

#philadelphiahistory #semiquincentennial #America250 #thomassully

🎨 #ThomasSully, American portrait painter, was #BOTD 19 June 1783, #Art #Painting

Frankie stopped by the office to admire the latest APS Press book: Thomas Sully's Philadelphians by Peter Conn. She would have liked to see more canine subjects, but still recommends the book to humans everywhere.

www.pennpress.org/978160618049...

#thomassully

American artist Thomas Sully’s daughter Rosalie Kemble Sully was the model for this picture of an art student with portfolio and drawing pencil in hand. The title "The Student" appears on the back in Sully's script, and is so identified in his register. It was begun on November 23, 1839, finished on the 30th, and intended for the Philadelphia publisher and art collector Edward L. Carey, who was later president of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). The painting, however, descended in the artist's family, thus raising the possibility that Carey never actually received it or that, if he did own it, it was eventually returned to Sully. There is a persistent tradition that the hat worn by Rosalie was in reality a lampshade supplied by her father in order to obtain a special effect. More to the point, however, is the likelihood that Sully was aware of a strikingly similar 1779 composition from English painter Henry Robert Morland depicting his son George Morland wearing a broad hat and sitting behind an easel. In that work (at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut), the artist's child is also presented as an art student, the atmosphere in which he works is an enveloping darkness, and the shadows cast upon his face are just like those in Sully's painting. Accordingly, the portrait of Rosalie may be more properly regarded as a somewhat belated, if altogether successful, representative of a type of lamplit, chiaroscuro picture popular in England in the late eighteenth century. Sully's daughter died young, and it is not surprising that her father painted several replicas of this painting. One is dated 1848 and is listed in the register as "The Student." Another, listed in the register for 1871, was formerly in the collection of the artist's daughter-in-law, Mrs. Alfred Sully, of Brooklyn. A painting called The Fair Student, exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1852, may have been yet another replica.

“The Student” (Rosalie Kemble Sully) by Thomas Sully (American) - Oil on canvas / 1839 - Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) #womeninart #art #oilpainting #ThomasSully #Sully #theMET #artwork #ArtText #student #womensart #portraitofawoman #MetropolitanMuseumofArt #AmericanArt #AmericanArtist

Out today! Thomas Sully's Philadelphians: Painting the Athens of America by Peter Conn, a book Michael Zuckerman called "a work like no other."

Buy your copy at the link below, or order from your favorite bookstore.
www.pennpress.org/978160618049...

#thomassully #philadelphia #philadelphiahistory