Farm Workers, Most Baling Hay; Leaning Woman, Bust Length (from Sketchbook) 1810 - 1820

Thomas Sully made this sketch in pen and ink, on paper. It shows farm workers in various poses. Sully was an Anglo-American portrait painter during the late 18th and early to mid-19th century. The artist was known for his romanticized and idealized images of wealthy people and prominent figures. But here we see Sully depicting farm workers doing manual labor, as well as a portrait of a woman looking down. The artist seems to be playing with the relationship between the figure and their relationship to land and labor. In the young American republic, as it was then, the question of who labored and who owned land was central to debates about race, class, and citizenship. Sully’s sketch suggests that this theme was on his mind. To understand this work better, we could research the history of agricultural labor in the United States, as well as the artist's life, his views on social hierarchies, or the institutional context of art production at the time. In the end, art becomes a powerful indicator of cultural context.