ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on George Frederick Cooke as Richard III, Thomas Sully's finest theatrical portrait, and Washington's Passage of the Delaware, his best-known history painting. In Philadelphia Sully saw John Howard Payne and Edwin Forrest as well as the English thespians Edmund Kean and Charles Mathews on their American tours. Sully's first major dramatic portrait, William Burke Wood in the Role of Charles de Moor, derives from his friendship with Wood. Cooke as Richard III reveals Sully a master fully formed. The painting stands in his career as The Skater does in Stuart's or Elizabeth Farren and Queen Charlotte in Thomas Lawrence's. Like Cooke, Sully's Washington's Passage of the Delaware combines historical portraiture with history painting. Paintings of historical scenes had almost as great a vogue in America as in Britain. Sully placed his Washington's Passage of the Delaware at McKonkey's Ferry some miles upstream from Philadelphia.
