Mother and Son

Mother and Son

Thomas Sully

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This grand, allegorically rich portrait of Sully's daughter Jane Cooper Sully Darley (1807-1877) and her son Francis Thomas Sully Darley (d.1914) has provoked many interpretations, the most ambitious of which equates mother and son with the mythological figure of Penelope, the ideal wife of Odysseus, and Telemachus, her perfect son. Sully filled the composition with attributes of blithe family life: the spray of ivy clinging to the wall is the emblem of a faithful wife; the scene on the urn--Hermes bringing the infant Dionysus to be nurtured by the nymphs--alludes to the duties of motherhood; the boy's foot lightly resting on his dog connotes fidelity and loyalty.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Mother and SonMother and SonMother and SonMother and SonMother and Son

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.