(From Sketchbook) 1810 - 1820

This sketch was made by Thomas Sully sometime in the first half of the 19th century. It gives us an insight into the way an artist educated in the Royal Academy went about his business. Sully's sketch shows us a king on horseback, a man holding another horse, and a rearing horse with a fallen rider. The visual codes reference classical art. In Sully's time, academic institutions maintained a highly codified hierarchy of genres, where history painting was held to be the most important. History painting served a public function. It was supposed to inspire virtue and encourage patriotism through the representation of grand historical and mythological subjects. Sully was primarily a portrait painter but, as this sketch shows, his artistic ambitions were pitched at the level of historical narrative. Art historians look at the artist's sketches, letters, and commissioned work, and, in doing so, build up an understanding of the artist's education and how the prevailing ideas of the time affected his approach to art.