How a hidden family archive revealed a forgotten Dakota artist to the world
In short: For decades, the vibrant, intricate works of Dakota artist Mary Sully remained tucked away in a family basement. Only recently brought to light by her great-nephew, historian Philip Deloria, these striking portraits of 20th-century icons are finally receiving the institutional recognition they were denied during her lifetime.
Mary Sully, who lived from 1896 to 1963, created a remarkable body of work between the 1920s and 1940s that remained largely unseen by the public for nearly a century. Her artistic output, characterized by the use of colored pencil, wax crayon, ink, and graphite on paper, captures a wide array of cultural figures from her era. Among her subjects were notable personalities such as Fiorello La Guardia, Babe Ruth, Gertrude Stein, and Fred Astaire, as well as performers like Claudette Colbert and the duo Lunt and Fontanne.
The rediscovery of Sully’s portfolio by her great-nephew, Philip Deloria, transformed her from a private family secret into an artist of significant historical interest. Her work is now part of the collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which acquired several pieces in 2023 through the Mary Sully Foundation and various donor funds. These acquisitions place her alongside other figures in the museum’s history, including the 19th-century American painter Thomas Sully, whose oil portraits have been held by the institution since the late 1800s.
Sully’s compositions often blended traditional artistic mediums with a unique, modern sensibility. By depicting figures like the architect Ralph Adams Cram or the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, she engaged with the cultural zeitgeist of the early to mid-20th century. The recent institutional embrace of her work serves as a long-overdue reclamation, ensuring that her contributions to American art are no longer confined to a basement but are instead preserved and studied within the context of the broader artistic canon.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Mary Sully: A Reclamation
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