The history of early-nineteenth-century Philadelphia told through Thomas Sully's portraits of the people who lived it

Thomas Sully (1783-1872) is widely regarded as one of the most important portrait painters of the nineteenth century. His 1824 portrait of John Quincy Adams, who became President within the year, brought him widespread recognition, and many notable Americans of the day had their portraits painted by him. In 1808, Sully settled in Philadelphia, simultaneously the most cosmopolitan and most racially embattled city in America, where he resided for the remainder of his life. In this book, Peter Conn treats Sully's portraits of various prominent Philadelphians as documentary evidence of the city's history in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Thomas Sully's Philadelphians features nearly forty full-color reproductions of his portraits, among which are several of his finest from the period between 1810 and 1840, and in which the faces of the men and women who appear are alive with intelligence and personality. Philadelphia Museum of Art Project Associate Curator Carol Eaton Soltis characterizes the portraits as having "luminous color, a dramatic or nuanced quality of light, a rich but refined handling of paint and description of form, tightly integrated compositions that underline a narrative or dramatic moment."

Grouped under headings such as individuals, institutions, professions, and contemporary events, these portraits offer windows into much that was going on in Philadelphia in the first half of the nineteenth century. Conn explores education, politics, theater, medicine, journalism, commerce, philanthropy, religion, and the fierce debate over slavery through detailed examination of the paintings and their contexts. Drawing upon previously unpublished archival material, Conn brings to life the people who participated in the history of Philadelphia and shows how they were represented for posterity in Thomas Sully's portraits.