Administrative Information

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Preferred Citation

Julia Sully. Papers, 1854-1940. Accession 26567, Personal papers collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.

Acquisition Information

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Biographical/Historical Information

Julia Sully (d. 1948) of Gordonsville, Virginia, was the great-grandniece of Thomas Sully, the distinguished painter, and grandaughter of Robert Sully, an eminent artist. She built a career around the arts, and was prominent in Richmond, Va., social and cultural life. She wrote a weekly column, entitled "The Camera and the Pen Recall Bygone Days: A Weekly Pictorial Series of Events and Places in Richmond's Past", for the RICHMOND NEWS LEADER during the mid-1930's, and served as director of the Art Index Division of the Virginia Commission on Conservation and Development from 1937-1940. She also served as chairman of the Richmond Branch of the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform in 1932.

Scope and Content Information

Papers, 1854-1940, of Julia Sully of Richmond, Virginia, including catalogs, clippings, correspondence, literary manuscripts, pamphlets, notes, and photographs. The majority of these papers are Sully's articles written for her weekly column "The Camera and the Pen Recall Bygone Days,", for the Richmond News Leader, on artists and their works, as they concerned Virginia. The newspaper copies of the articles are not included with these original typescripts.

Topics include the style of such artists as Thomas Eakins, George Fuller, Winslow Homer, Robert Mills, Claude Monet, Virginia's William L. Sheppard, Robert Sully, and Thomas Sully, the controversy over Mordi Gassner's murals on display at the Richmond Academy of Arts in 1936, Charles Hoffbauer's Confederate murals at the Confederate Memorial Institute, the Mariner's Museum in Newport News, Virginia, and an exhibition at the Richmond Academy of Arts for Leslie Bolling. Sully also wrote about the Frick collection of art in New York, John D. Rockefeller's folk art collection at William and Mary College, the artists of Spain and the Netherlands, and covered numerous openings at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia.

Of note in the collection are materials relating to the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial in Atlanta, Georgia. Included are correspondence and telegrams from the sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, to Julia Sully, regarding the controversy over the memorial which eventually led to Borglum's abandoning the project and destroying his models. Also included is a founders roll, an invitation to the unveiling of the Robert E. Lee carving in 1924, a report of the financial account with Borglum, a photograph of the memorial, and oversized editions of the Stone Mountain magazine, Volume 1, No. 3.

Another item of note are the collection of letters regarding Sully's work as chairman of the Richmond branch of the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform, 1932. These letters concern the organizations work with the Virginia Democratic party to repeal the eighteenth amendment of the Constitution.

Arrangement

Arranged alphabetically by folder title.