Edna St. Vincent Millay
Mary Sully (nee Susan Mabel Deloria), born on the Standing Rock reservation in South Dakota, was a little-known, somewhat reclusive, Indigenous artist, producing highly distinctive work informed by her Native American and Euro-American ancestry. As a great-granddaughter of the successful 19th-century portraitist Thomas Sully (1783-1872), Susan Deloria expressly adopted, in the 1920s, the name of her mother, Mary Sully (1858-1916), daughter of Alfred Sully (1820-1879), son of the celebrated painter, and the Dakota woman Susan Pehandutawin (dates unknown), from an eight-year union when Sully was stationed on the Great Plains, before and after the Civil War. In addition to this artistic pedigree, Deloria grew up in a distinguished family of Dakota leaders at Standing Rock. Her sister Ella Cara Deloria (1889-1971), with whom she primarily lived, was a linguistic ethnographer trained by theColumbia University pioneer of modern anthropology, Franz Boas.
Mary Sully, like many of her contemporaries as well as her talented great-grandfather, had a fascination with celebrities. She and her sister were avid entertainment fans and frequented many theaters during their long-term stays in New York. Sully was also exposed to numerous popular publications (such as Time magazine), using stories and images as inspiration for her own art. Like her Dakota ancestors who worked with beads and quills, Mary Sully was able to translate what she knew of these personalities into a unique graphic language. The subtlety and poignancy with which she layered her experiences as a Dakota woman and an intensely creative artist offers a fresh and complex lens through which to consider American life in the first half of the 20th century.
Mary Sully, like many of her contemporaries as well as her talented great-grandfather, had a fascination with celebrities. She and her sister were avid entertainment fans and frequented many theaters during their long-term stays in New York. Sully was also exposed to numerous popular publications (such as Time magazine), using stories and images as inspiration for her own art. Like her Dakota ancestors who worked with beads and quills, Mary Sully was able to translate what she knew of these personalities into a unique graphic language. The subtlety and poignancy with which she layered her experiences as a Dakota woman and an intensely creative artist offers a fresh and complex lens through which to consider American life in the first half of the 20th century.
Artwork Details
- Title: Edna St. Vincent Millay
- Artist: Mary Sully (Dakota, 1896–1963)
- Date: ca. 1920s–40s
- Culture: Dakota
- Medium: Colored pencil, black ink, gilt, white paint, pastel crayon, on paper
- Dimensions: 34 3/8 × 19 in. (87.3 × 48.3 cm)
Top panel: 12 7/8 × 18 in.
Center panel: 12 × 19 in.
Bottom panel: 9 1/2 × 12 in. - Credit Line: Gift of The Mary Sully Foundation, 2023
- Object Number: 2023.280.3
- Curatorial Department: The American Wing
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