ABSTRACT
For Thomas Sully as for other Americans Byron by mid-1820s was "more a name than a figure of mortal flesh"; he had become, in fact, "an actor in a pageant of national awakening". Lithography, established in America by mid-1820s, permitted stills more reproductions. For his first lithograph of 1825-26, among the earliest done in America, Rembrandt Peale chose Byron as his subject. This chapter analyzes why Sully depicted Byron as he did. Sully for his Byron did not limit himself to depictions of Richard Westall. By 1826, when he began work, a huge mass of information had accrued around Byron: reports by travellers, memoirs and books, articles in newspapers and journals, poems commemorating the martyr for Greece. In 1824 Byron had died in Greece. Nicolas-Eustache Maurin in Lord Byron – La Grece Reconnaissante posed Byron against a sea battle in Greek waters. By underscoring Byron's sacrifice, Maurin both promoted the Greek cause and gave to Byron's death context and immediacy.
