Portrait of Jean Terford David (1813): Art, History and Details

Portrait of Jean Terford David (1813) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Thomas Sully (American, born England, 1783–1872).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

According to his own inventory, the astonishingly productive Thomas Sully painted more than 2,600 works during his career. Most of these paintings were commissioned portraits, including this one of John Terford David, who had just recently married. French-born David was an American officer who served as a paymaster during the War of 1812. His rank is indicated by the fringed epaulet on his left shoulder and the lack of one on his right. In composing the portrait, Sully ingeniously positioned David's body on an angle to emphasize the single epaulet and downplay the uniform's lack of symmetry.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of Jean Terford David
• Date: 1813
• Creator attribution: Thomas Sully (American, born England, 1783–1872)
• Culture: America
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 122 x 103 x 10 cm (48 1/16 x 40 9/16 x 3 15/16 in.); Unframed: 89.5 x 70.5 cm (35 1/4 x 27 3/4 in.)
• Collection: American - Painting
• Department: American Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1916.1979.1

A detail from the museum

Thomas Sully's working motto was "flattery—nothing so sure of success as flattering your portraits."

Collection credit

Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1925.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1928.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.