ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on George Frederick Cooke as Richard III, Sully's finest theatrical portrait, and Washington's Passage of the Delaware, his best-known history painting. It concentrates on Sully's portraits of Fanny Kemble, specifically of her as Beatrice, and his culminating dramatic portrait, Queen Victoria. Sully's Byron is the Romantic Poet, of Nature and in Nature. As Lawrence brings to life the leading personages of Regency Britain, so does Sully those of Federal America. Part of the enduring popularity of Leutze's epic work derives from its prominent position as the centerpiece of the Metropolitan's American Wing, whereas Sully's Washington's Passage, in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, is not currently on exhibit. After the mid-century, Emanuel Leutze's melodramatic Washington Crossing the Delaware overshadowed Washington's Passage of the Delaware. Cooke offered Byron new evidence of his transatlantic fame: in a reading-room in Albany, near Washington, he pronounced English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers well written.
