(From Sketchbook) 1810 - 1820

Curator: This is a page from a sketchbook by Thomas Sully, dating from around 1810 to 1820. It's a work on paper, rendered in ink. My first thought? Intimate. Almost voyeuristic. Editor: It certainly possesses an intriguing emotional rawness, yet to me, the unfinished nature invites speculation. What narratives are gestating here, suspended in ink? I wonder about the implied stories of gendered intimacy. Curator: Tell me more! You think the figures represent women? Because to my eye, at least one of them is clearly a man, the one seated alone in the bottom section. Editor: Well, that’s an interesting debate in itself! In the cluster of figures above, aren’t we seeing the early 19th-century preoccupation with idealized womanhood, almost as if this is Sully experimenting with archetypes of female vulnerability or, indeed, strength? Look at the figures surrounding the child: isn’t he trying to figure out relationships within a group of mothers? Curator: I can see your point now that you put it that way, that there are distinct modes of being assigned to each figure. But the lonesome man: that is a feeling I get. Like, how do all these beings coalesce as individuals? He must have been struggling through many personal issues back then! Editor: Absolutely, and to connect it back, one lens could be situating these images within larger Romantic trends focusing on emotion and personal experiences in the context of nascent nationhood. Gender, in particular, was deployed strategically! Curator: So it all fits, then? The figures’ vulnerability meets a broader historical narrative of nation-building and assigned gendered behavior? Amazing. So in a sense, Sully unknowingly documented that struggle between being oneself and being part of something bigger! Editor: Precisely! It invites a reading beyond aesthetics, suggesting the social weight carried by bodies, especially within intimate, domestic spheres during that era. Curator: Wow! I am never looking at simple sketches again, thanks to you! Editor: Anytime. There is just so much power behind drawings such as this that seem minimal on their faces!