Thomas Sully
Richard Henry Bayard
1821
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Thomas Sully
Richard Henry Bayard
1821
Physical Qualities
Oil on canvas, Framed: 39 3/4 x 35 1/8 x 4 5/8 in. (101 x 89.2 x 11.7 cm) Sight: 29 x 24 1/2 in. (73.7 x 62.2 cm)
Credit Line
Bequest of Ellen Howard Bayard
Object Number
1939.179
Here, Richard Henry Bayard (1796–1868) poses in a fur-collared jacket and with fashionably tousled hair. The fur adorning his coat reflects the centuries-old trading network that linked Indigenous communities across North America to French, British, and Dutch colonizers who exported animal pelts.
Thomas Sully completed this portrait shortly after Bayard’s marriage to Mary Sophia Carroll (1804–1886). Carroll grew up on Homewood, a plantation built upon the ancestral Piscataway and Susquehannock land where the BMA sits today. Bayard was the first mayor of Wilmington, Delaware, and served two terms in the U.S. Senate representing Delaware.
The subject; to his wife, Mary Sophia Carroll Bayard; to her daughter, Mary L. Bettarini; Richard Howard Bayard, Baltimore; to his sister, Ellen Howard Bayard, Baltimore
AMW Reinstallation 2014
American Wing Rotations 2020
American Wing Rotations 2021
American Wing Rotations 2022
American Wing Rotations 2023
American Wing Rotations 2024
American Wing Rotations 2025
Charles Henry Hart, ed. "A Register of Portraits Painted by Thomas Sully, 1801 - 1871." Philadelphia, 1909, p. 25, no. 95
Edward Biddle and Matle Fielding, "The Life and Works of Thomas Sully (1783 - 1872)," Philadelphia: Wickersham Press, 1921, p. 95, no. 102
Kent Roberts Greenfield, "Annual I," The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1966, ill. p. 34
Van Devanter, Ann C., ed. "Anywhere So Long As There Be Freedom: Charles Carroll of Carrollton, His Family, and His Maryland." The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1975, ill. 83, p. 259.
Baltimore Museum of Art. The American Wing. Brochure. Baltimore, MD: Baltimore Museum of Art, [198-?], unpaged.
Charles Henry Hart, ed., A Register of Portraits Painted by Thomas Sully, 1801-1871, Philadelphia, 1909, p. 25, no. 95; Edward Biddle and Mantle Fielding, The Life and Works of Thomas Sully (1783-1872), Philadelphia: Wickersham Press, 1921, p. 95, no. 102; Kent Roberts Greenfield, Annual I, BMA, 1966, ill. p. 34
Inscribed: I.r., TS. 1822
On View at the BMA
