The Pocahontas ArchiveHistory on Trial Main Page

<-- Previous  |  Image Index  |  Next -->

page 38

43. Selected image: page 38. Source: Sully, Robert Matthew. "Pocahontas." c. 1852. (William M. S. Rasmussen and Robert S. Tilton, Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend. Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1994. 38.) This is the third of three different portraits by Robert Matthew Sully (the "younger" Sully, nephew of Thomas) around the same time in the early 1850s (see two entries in 1850). It is shown in Rasmussen and Tilton 1994 but not in Abrams 1999. Rasmussen and Tilton say that "Sully presents Pocahontas with a crown, and in garments of regal colors, red and green. This Pocahontas is a gentle, amiable girl who is totally a figure of fantasy. She wears the clothing of a European princess, which suggests a conception about royalty that had no counterpart in the Powhatan political system." Frankly, it is not clear to me how this painting is an evolution of the other two.
[painting]