Thomas Sully (American, 1783-1872)

Mrs. Thomas Morris (Elizabeth Sarah 'Sally' Kane)
1814
oil on canvas
initialed T.S., lower right
29 1/2 x 24 inches.

Provenance:

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Morris, Albany, New York;

to their daughter Caroline Julia Morris Stark (1818-1888), Dunbarton, Merrimack County, New Hampshire;

to her son Charles F. M. Stark (1848-1890), Dunbarton, Merrimack County, New Hampshire;

Main Street Gallery, Chicago, Illinois;

thence acquired by the present owners, March 1961.

Literature:

Catalogued as #1227 in Charles Henry Hart, Thomas Sully's Register of Portraits, 1801-1871, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 32, No. 4, 1908.

Exhibited:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York, 1897.

American Painting 1740 to 1920, Main Street Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, March 6-April 3, 1961.

Cincinnati Collects Paintings, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio, March 31-May 15, 1983.

Elizabeth Sarah 'Sally' Kane was born on October 31, 1778, in Dutchess County, New York to John and Sybil Kent Kane. She married lawyer and Congressional representative Thomas Morris on May 28, 1799, in Albany, New York, and the couple had at least twenty children together, primarily residing in Canandaigua for the duration of their marriage. Sally died in Albany on December 17, 1853.

According to Thomas Sully's Register of Portraits, Sully executed this portrait of Sally Kane Morris in 1814 during a visit to New York. It is one of several portraits the Morris family commissioned from Sully, including a portrait of family patriarch Robert Morris, Jr. (1704-1836), Sally's father-in-law, financier of the American Revolution, and signatory of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution (Painting #1230 in the Register of Portraits).