George P.A. Healy: Thomas Sully

"The Torn Hat" by Thomas Sully

George Healy wrote: "The first serious encouragement which I received came to me from Thomas Sully, who, when I was about eighteen, was called to Boston to paint a portrait of Colonel Perkins for the Athenaeum. Miss Jane Stuart, daughter of the great painter, spoke to him of 'little Healy's' attempts, and he sent word to me that if I would make a sketch from Nature and a copy of one of Stuart's heads, he would be glad to give me some advice. When I showed him what I had done, he looked at the canvases and exclaimed heartily: 'My young friend, I advise you to make painting your profession!'

Seven years later, Sully was in London to paint a portrait of the Queen. I was also there, engaged on the portrait of the celebrated naturalist, Audubon. I showed him my work as I had shown him my sketches, and after looking a long time in silence at the portrait, he said, with the courtly politeness for which he was noted: 'Mr. Healy, you have no reason to regret having followed the advice I gave you some years ago.'

It is a pleasure to me to pay my debt of gratitude to this good painter, who was also so kindly a man and so thorough a gentleman. His portraits of women were peculiarly sweet and delicate, and in his day he was very popular. But an artist's reputation is a thing of fashion, of caprice also. Sully lived to be an old man. Younger artists with different ideas and aspirations had sprung up by his side. Little by little the popular painter grew to be less admired. His studio was nearly deserted. He was not a rich man, having through bad investments, I believe, lost a part of his earnings.

Every time I went to Philadelphia I never failed to visit my old friend, and each time I found the same courteous and gentle-mannered man who first encouraged me; never complaining, glad that I had succeeded in life, as free from envy as though his own popularity had not waned - a living proof that if some artists in the struggle to the front forget at times not only charity but even simple courtesy. Others remain gentlemen even in the distress neglect brings with it. The noble and simple old man preached a lesson by his very silence and dignity, which I have endeavored never to forget."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter" by G.P.A. Healy.)