Byron, Sully, and the Power of PortraitureFirst published in 2005. Since the early nineteenth century, Byron, the man and his image, have captured the hearts and minds of untold legions of people of all political and social stripes in Britain, Europe, America, and around the world. This book focuses on the history and cultural significance for Federal America of the only portrait of Byron known to have been painted by a major artist. In private hands from 1826 until this day, Thomas Sulley’s Byron has never before been the subject of scholarly study. Beginning with the discovery of the portrait in 1999 and a 200-year narrative of the portrait’s provenance and its relation to other well-known Byron portraits, the author discusses the work within the broad context of British and American portraiture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. |
Contents
Introduction The Importance of Portraiture | 1 |
1 Provenance of a Painting | 11 |
2 Portraits of Byron | 33 |
3 First Portraitist of Philadelphia | 51 |
George Frederick Cooke and George Washingtons Passage of the Delaware | 77 |
Fanny Kemble and Queen Victoria | 107 |
6 Byronic Biddle | 137 |
Lafayette to Byron | 161 |