A teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Thomas Sully became one of the foremost early 19th-century portrait painters, known for painting pretty faces on his subjects, often disregarding reality.

He was the son of English actors and was born in Horncastle, Lincolnshire. He came to Philadelphia in 1792 when he was nine years old. Sully showed early drawing talent and first studied with his older brother, Lawrence, a miniature painter. To earn money, he tried unsuccessfully to have a career in insurance but then turned full time to painting and was able to be critiqued by Gilbert Stuart in Boston. He embraced Stuart's interest in classical styles, but favored pretty colors and opaque and glossy surf...