Queen Victoria and Thomas Sully

Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000. Hardcover. VG/VG. Reddish boards with black cloth spine and gold lettering; cream dj with color illustration and cream lettering; 210 pp. with 24 color and 30 bw illustrations. "Queen Victoria and Thomas Sully tells the story of the artist's complex and challenging sojourn abroad, in which he spent five months waiting for a sitting with Her Majesty. He kept expectations in check as he navigated his way through the corridors of British protocol and power, biding time by becoming an active participant in London's lively art scene. By drawing upon Victoria's and Sully's journals as well as contemporary letters, Carrie Barratt deftly arrives at exactly how Sully achieved his stunning portrait of Victoria, which took great liberties with conventions of state portraiture and was quickly acclaimed as a masterpiece." "This illustrated volume, which accompanies an exhibition originating at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and traveling to The Wallace Collection in London, illuminates not only the creation of this painting but the competitive process of making portraits in order to advance political power. Barratt includes an edited version of Sully's engrossing journal, the diary of a highly articulate and entrepreneurial American in London with his twenty-one-year-old daughter during the exciting coronation year. Both the exhibition and the book have been undertaken at this time to commemorate the anniversary of Queen Victoria's death in January 1901 - an event sure to garner considerable attention on both sides of the Atlantic."--Jacket.