Thomas Sully’s Philadelphians: Painting the Athens of America, by Peter Conn

The inviting volume—170 pages plus a bibliography and index—features portraits rendered with consummate skill and revealing insight. But Thomas Sully’s Philadelphians isn’t only an art book. Conn’s cultural scope and scholarly interests are amply reflected in his social, cultural, and political look at the region, making Painting the Athens of America an apt subtitle.

Retired from the University of Pennsylvania as Vartan Gregorian Professor of English and a specialist in American literature, Conn has published three previous works (Cambridge University Press). He’s served as a consultant for historical television, dean of Penn’s College of Arts & Sciences, a professor of education, and both a Guggenheim and an NEH Fellow.

Portrait of Sully, portrait of Philly

For this volume (published by the American Philosophical Society), the author chose 23 of Sully’s many paintings, surrounding and grounding them in Philadelphia’s 19th-century milieu. Conn dedicated each of his 11 chapters to an institution or event and provided even-handed and well-documented cultural and social history to contextualize Sully’s portraits.

The brief opening biography states that Sully was born in England to actor parents who emigrated to America in 1792 with their nine children. After living in the South, the family settled in Philadelphia in the early 1800s, where Sully lived and worked for most of the next six decades. Residing on Fifth Street, he was an engaged and popular citizen (and an accomplished music lover and amateur flutist) whose portraiture supported his family. Conn concludes with the epilogue “Thomas Sully and His Critics” that places the painter among peers.

Between these verbal bookends is a portrait not only of influential 19th-century Philadelphians but of their era. Conn looks into some seminal institutions: Pennsylvania Hospital, Second Bank of the United States, Library Company of Philadelphia, American Philosophical Society, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the University of Pennsylvania. He also considers events or cultural happenings—theater, Philadelphia’s Jews, Lafayette’s return, natural history, and the debate over slavery—that enlivened or enraged the populace from Colonial times to the mid-19th century.

Painting Philly’s cultural life

The genesis and highlight of Conn’s book are Sully’s remarkable portraits, bringing the people to life in the often-luminous works of refinement, skill, and character that led Conn deep into the city’s history. The chapter on the influential Second Bank of the United States is illustrated by a romantic portrait of Nicholas Biddle. Though Biddle was a lawyer, political powerhouse, and financier, this painting evokes his earlier peripatetic and poetic days on his grand tour of Europe. Conn likens it to a portrait of Lord Byron, also painted by the equally well-traveled Sully.

A chapter on “The Jews of Philadelphia” traces Jewish impact and influence via a profile of Rebecca Gratz, whose two portraits (of at least four Sully painted) grace this chapter. Gratz, a member of Philadelphia’s most prominent Jewish family, was “an eager participant in Philadelphia’s social life” and a leading philanthropist, and the painter captures both her graciousness and her standing in the community.

In his “The Theater” chapter, Conn mines the city’s rich theatrical lore via Sully’s portraits of prominent actors Fanny Kemble, Charlotte Cushman, and George Frederick Cooke (painted in his costume from Henry VI, Part III). The legendary Kemble received a “uniformly ecstatic” 1832 welcome and became a friend of the Sully family, and Cushman electrified audiences with her “breeches” roles of Hamlet and Romeo. Conn also profiles the Chestnut Street Theatre, which opened in 1794 and was considered the “best equipped and most lavishly decorated” of the country’s playhouses.

From medicine to the Marquis

According to Conn, “the history of medical science in America begins in Philadelphia,” and his “Pennsylvania Hospital” chapter looks at that influential institution, chartered in 1751. The hospital’s managers and physicians “collaborated on [many] innovations that would influence American medicine for generations.” Here, historical details are illuminated by Sully’s portraits of Samuel Coates, the decades-long manager and president of the hospital, and Benjamin Rush, the most famous and influential physician in America.

To illuminate the history and work of the American Philosophical Society—founded by Benjamin Franklin, John Bartram, and others—Conn includes Sully’s eloquent portrait of Peter Stephen Du Ponceau. Du Ponceau served in the Continental Army, studied law, and became an eminent scholar who, among many accomplishments, helmed a committee gathering information about Native American languages.

In a “Lafayette Returns to Philadelphia” chapter, Conn details the war hero’s 1824-25 triumphal American tour, which began and concluded in the city. In this chapter (and in Independence National Historical Park) is Sully’s striking portrait of the remarkable Marquis, painted during the war hero’s visit to the 24 American states he helped to create.

Pivotal time, pivotal artist

An additional pleasure of Thomas Sully’s Philadelphians is that many of these portraits are still in or around Philadelphia. To highlight a few: theater folk Kemble and Cooke can be found at PAFA, while Charlotte Kushman is at the Free Library. Biddle is at Andalusia House (in Bensalem); Gratz has two striking images in the Rosenbach collection; and Sully’s own self-portrait lives at the Franklin Institute. If the book inspires you to make a pilgrimage, though, call ahead; works may or may not be on display.

During Sully’s long lifetime, Philadelphia was indeed the Athens of America, a cosmopolitan place that “set the standards of early 19th-century American culture” in art, architecture, theater, political life, natural history, and science. Drawing on previously unpublished material, Conn’s deeply researched, readable book dives into a pivotal historical time recorded by a pivotal artist to create an illuminating, rewarding portrait of life and art in Philadelphia.