Reading is Fundamental
“Brother & Sister,” from The Gift: a Christmas and New Year's Present for 1839. Philadelphia: E.L. Carey & A. Hart., 1838.
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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.”
