Item 30 - Reading is Fundamental
Reading is Fundamental
“Brother & Sister,” from The Gift: a Christmas and New Year's Present for 1839. Philadelphia: E.L. Carey & A. Hart., 1838.
Catalog Record | Enlarged Image | Adopt a Gift Book Home
Many U.S. publishers wanted to promote national art and so incorporated in their volumes engraved plates reproducing the work of prominent American painters. This delicately rendered scene of a young woman in profile reading to an attentive boy was designed by the Philadelphia painter Thomas Sully, whose work was praised in Godey’s Lady’s Book (1844) as “exquisitely beautiful.”