Thomas Sully Residence
This house was briefly the home of Thomas Sully (1783 –1872) one of the most prolific and highly regarded American painters of the nineteenth century. Built 1796-97 by Griffith Coombe, a house carpenter, its crisply detailed marble door frame, window sills, lintels, and watertable mark it as a precocious example of the Greek Revival. According to DeSilver's Philadelphia Directory and Stranger's Guide, Sully lived here in 1828 and 1829.
Born in England, Sully grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, and he learned painting from his brother-in-law Jean Belzons and his brother Lawrence, both miniaturists. After launching his career in Norfolk and Richmond, he moved in 1895 to New York and then in 1808 to Philadelphia, where he remained for the rest of his life. He had spent a few weeks with the painter Gilbert Stuart in Boston in 1807, but much more important to his development was his 1809 trip to London, when he benefited from discussions with Benjamin West and Thomas Lawrence. When he returned to Philadelphia he rented space for a residence and picture gallery in Philosophical Hall, and his career took off.
After the deaths of Charles Willson Peale in 1827 and Gilbert Stuart in 1828, Sully took up the mantle of America’s leading portraitist. His early sitters included Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, and the Marquis de Lafayette, whom he depicted in a style that could vary from the flamboyantly romantic to the smoothly classical. While living in this house in 1828-1829, his work included portraits of well-known public figures and people of wealth, including General Charles Gratiot and his wife Ann, Richard Biddle, Jane Penn-Gaskell, Adèle Sigoigne, and Gertrude Leslie.
In 1837-38 Sully traveled to London again to prepare a portrait of Queen Victoria for the Society of the Sons of Saint George, a charitable organization. The young monarch was reported to be much taken with the personable American, and his lively, very human depiction of her won accolades.