Native Modern: Mary Sully

The exhibit Hearts of Our People was a revelation to many, including to me. Such innovative and varied works, so brilliantly crafted, by artists whose names were mostly unfamiliar!  Before this show I didn’t know how to respond when asked if I have a favorite gallery at Mia. l had many favorites. But now I answer, the Native American Gallery.

When I was touring Hearts of Our People, one artist whose work I always included was Mary Sully. I found her triptych, The Indian Church, so intimate and original. I was intrigued by the fact that she was the great-granddaughter of Thomas Sully, who painted our George Washington portrait. She was also a member of a prominent family on the Standing Rock Reservation located in Yankton, South Dakota. I was curious to know more about this lineage.

When I learned that Mia would be having a Mary Sully exhibition, following a major exhibit at the Met, I was determined to better understand this artist.  Her great-nephew, Phillip DeLoria, a Harvard historian who is largely responsible for introducing her work to the art world and has written the book Becoming Mary Sully, spoke at Mia on March 16. He brought along some of her proud family members. He gave a great talk.

Mary Sully, whose birth name was Susan Deloria, was born in 1896 on the Standing Rock Reservation. She was the child of Mary Sully and Philip Deloria, who was an Episcopalian minister. Her grandfather was Alfred Sully, son of Thomas Sully. Alfred Sully was a soldier who was briefly deployed to the Dakotas, where he had a liaison with Susan Pehanlutawin, who bore his child Mary. Alfred Sully is notorious for his involvement in military policy “that treated Indians as insurgents in their own territories.” to quote from Becoming Mary Sully. But he did contribute to Susan Deloria’s artistic lineage. In adulthood she changed her name to Mary Sully, as she pursued her artistic ambitions.

Mary Sully, April 1965

Photography by Ella Deloria

Susan/Mary suffered throughout her life from what is often termed social anxiety. There is some speculation that she also was synesthetic, a neurological condition in which one’s senses tend to intertwine, giving one’s perception of the world an additional dimension. For example, one might see music as colors.  She and her sister Ella, a noted anthropologist and ethnographer who worked with Franz Boas and Margaret Mead, lived together for most of their lives, sometimes on the reservation but also in New York City. Ella supported them both, often struggling to do so.

Mary was a mostly self-taught artist who never achieved notice in her lifetime. She made various attempts at acquiring a more formal education, briefly studying design at The University of Kansas in Lawrence, where she and her sister lived for a short time. But her mental health problems seemed to interfere with both formal training and the receipt of recognition. She and Ella made various stabs at trying to sell her work, but were mostly unsuccessful, partially because they knew nothing about artistic promotion. She had a few exhibits on Indian reservations, including at the Flandreau Vocational High School in South Dakota and at the Pipestone Indian School in Minnesota.

Nonetheless, her body of work is prodigious. Many years after her death in 1963, Philip Deloria and his mother, who was a librarian, finally examined a trunk containing the works she left behind. Included were 134 so-called “personality prints,” triptychs drawn on art paper with colored pencils. Each piece, arranged vertically, is dedicated to a specific “personality” who achieved some sort of fame between the 1920’s and ‘40s, the period when Mary was most active. Some of these triptychs elucidate concepts, such as “Spring” or “Divorce,” instead of a person. Mary did other work, including illustrations for some of Ella’s anthropology books, but the personality prints stand out.

Spring, c. 1935 • Mary Sully

Colored pencil and pigments on paper

The Driscoll Art Accessions Endowment Fund and

Bequest of Virginia Doneghy, by Exchange • 2023.56.2

As Philip Deloria confessed in his lecture, it took him a long time to decipher the meaning of his aunt’s personality prints as they are so original, comprising a visual language that was entirely Sully’s own. At the top of each of these triptychs is an abstracted, symbolic, metaphorical portrait of its chosen subject. In the middle panel, Sully usually creates a design using art deco shapes and patterns, such as might be used with wallpaper. These patterns perhaps reflect her brief formal study of decorative art while in Kansas. And in the third panel, she often borrows from Native American symbolism and craft. Patterns found in beadwork, pottery, and weaving are apparent. The result is a complex but very pleasing work of art.

Fred Astaire, ca.1920s-40s • Mary Sully

Colored pencil, wax crayon, ink and graphite on paper Courtesy of the Mary Sully Foundation

For example, for a triptych labeled Fred Astaire (one of the few subjects whose name I immediately recognized), she created, in the first panel, images of dancing feet, seeming to leap off the page. She uses the same colors throughout the triptych, blues and yellows. In the second panel are repetitive floral patterns, which may have been inspired by Moorish tile patterns. The third panel is given over to geometric abstraction with the repeated use of triangles and rectangles pointing in four directions, evoking Native American aesthetics.

The years that Mary and Ella spent in New York City may explain Mary Sully’s fascination with celebrity, particularly movie stars. She made personality portraits of Shirley Temple, Greta Garbo, and Loretta Young. Other subjects included FDR and Father Flanagan, of Boys Town fame. Many of her subjects were featured on the cover of Time magazine. This interest in celebrity echoes the career of Thomas Sully, who was also drawn to painting portraits of the movers and shakers of the day, including John Quincy Adams, the Marquis de Lafayette, Thomas Jefferson, and Queen Victoria. And of course there is Mia’s own George Washington, Thomas Sully’s copy of Gilbert Stuart’s original.

Shirley Temple, c.1938 • Mary Sully

Colored pencil and pigments on paper

The Driscoll Art Accessions Endowment Fund and

Bequest of Virginia Doneghy, By Exchange, 2023.56.1

Perhaps her focus on celebrity hindered Mary Sully’s career, as to some her work seemed “not Indian enough.” But she did address specifically Indian issues. One of her last personality prints is titled Three Stages of Indian History: Pre Columbian Freedom, Reservation Fetters, the Bewildering Present. As the title suggests, it is more complex than most. The top panel is divided into four rows. The bottom row depicts a peaceful scene of native women seated in a verdant landscape, in typical Native colors of green, yellow, red and blue. Above is a bleak brownish scene of drooping crops and log cabins behind what looks like barbed wire fences, referencing reservation life. Next, brown silhouettes of Indian figures in various states of struggle: reaching, falling, squirming. And in the final section, we see only legs and feet, clad in blue jeans, boots and in one case, a suit and spats, perhaps stomping on the Indians depicted below. Philip Deloria thinks that the design of this section was influenced by Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry and by Aaron Douglas’ Aspects of Negro Life.

Three Stages of Indian History: Pre-Columbian Freedom, Reservation Fetters, the Bewildering Present, ca. 1920s-40s

Mary Sully • Colored pencil, pastel crayon, ink, and graphite on paper

Courtesy of the Mary Sully Foundation

In the middle panel of this work, the themes from above are repeated: undulating strips of red, green, blue and yellows; brown barbed wire fences; the struggling figures; and the legs and feet. And in the bottom panel, the design is completely abstract. The bright and drab colors are interwoven, geometric shapes simplified.

For reasons not clear, Mary Sully’s creative output diminished after 1940. She died of cancer in 1963, never receiving artistic recognition. Her dual identity and her interest in themes which traversed cultures made her art difficult to classify. But the title of our exhibit at Mia, Mary Sully Native Modern, is an apt description of her artistic contribution. Mia is proudly playing a major role in educating the art world about Mary Sully.  A recognition long overdue.