1813
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Portrait of Jean Terford David is a 1813 unspecified by Thomas Sully, a American Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A man in a dark military coat looks straight at you. His left shoulder has a gold-fringed epaulet; the right one is missing. Sully painted this right after the War of 1812. The missing epaulet tells us the sitter was a paymaster—he handled money, not battles. That small detail turns a simple portrait into a quiet story about rank and service. If you like how Sully makes a face feel alive, look up chiaroscuro.
According to his own inventory, the astonishingly productive Sully painted more than 2,600 works during his career. Most of these paintings were commissioned portraits, including this one of John Terford David, who had just recently married. French-born David was an American officer who served as a paymaster during the War of 1812. His rank is indicated by the fringed epaulet on his left shoulder and the lack of one on his right. In composing the portrait, Sully ingeniously positioned David's body on an angle to emphasize the single epaulet and downplay the uniform's lack of symmetry.
Sully's working motto was "flattery--nothing so sure of success as flattering your portraits."
Read the full account in the museum source.
Thomas Sully was an English-American portrait painter. He was born in England, became a naturalized American citizen in 1809, and lived most of his life in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, including in the Thomas Sully…
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