Thomas Sully (1783-1872) painted this oil portrait for Patrick Henry’s biographer, William Wirt, in 1815. An engraved version of it appeared as the frontispiece to Wirt’s Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry (Philadelphia: James Webster, 1817). Wirt probably commissioned the painting from Sully for this purpose.
Henry had been dead since 1799. Sully apparently based the portrait on two sources. The first was the portrait miniature executed by his half-brother, Lawrence Sully, in 1795, which portrays Henry in the same double curl wig, black suit, white stock and scarlet cloak seen in the portrait miniature, along with the same blue eyes, prominent nose and firmly set mouth depicted in the miniature. The second source seems to be the portrait of Captain James Cook painted by Nathaniel Dance in 1776, which Sully might have seen during his nine-month stay in England in 1809, or an engraving of the same portrait, which Sully might have seen or owned. The original of the Cook portrait reproduced below is in the Greenwich Hospital Collection of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England.
The Nathaniel Dance portrait of Captain Cook was one of the most widely reproduced images of the famous explorer, and Sully might also have been inspired by an engraving of it, such as this one, Captain James Cook, engraved by J. K. Sherwin (London: Published by John Keyse Sherwin, 1779). This fine example is in the Wellcome Collection, London.
The painting was executed in oil on canvas and is 30 1/8″ by 25 1/16″ unframed. It bears the inscription “T S 1815” in the upper left corner, partly obscured by the present frame. According to his manuscript list of completed works, Sully began the painting on November 11 and completed it on November 20, 1815. He charged Wirt $100 for the painting.
William Wirt gave the portrait to Henry’s youngest son, John Henry (1796-1865). He gave it to William Wirt Henry (1831-1900). In 1873 he loaned the portrait to the Virginia State Library. In 1884, W.W. Henry withdrew the loan, the state government having in the meantime commissioned George Bagby Matthews to paint a copy of it, which now (2018) hangs in the Executive Mansion in Richmond. W.W. Henry subsequently gave it to his daughter Lucy Gray Henry Harrison. She consigned the painting to Stan V. Henkel’s 1910 sale of Patrick Henry material, along with a note saying that it was “painted by Thomas Sully (from a miniature taken from life) to the order of Hon. William Wirt, who presented it to John Henry, from whose estate I inherited it in direct descent.” It was bought by Charles H. Hamilton of Philadelphia. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation purchased the painting from the estate of his widow, Olivia P. Hamilton, in 1958.