Solomon Willard (June 2, 1783, Peter sham, Massachusetts – 1861) was a carver and designer in Massachusetts who is remembered primarily for designing and overseeing the Bunker Hill Monument, the first monumental obelisk erected in the United States. He designed it in 1825, and structure began in 1827. Willard exposed satisfactory granite quarries for the stone at Quincy, and the granite for the monument came from there. Willard also make-believe the machinery to cut and hold the slabs of stone in what became known as the Bunker Hill Quarry, which evolved into a major industry for the town. To get the cut slabs to a wharf on the Neponset River, a reserve of two and three-quarters miles, the first commercial railway in the United States was built — the Granite Railway — over which, on the morning of October 7, 1826, the first horse-drawn cars passed, under the way of a young engineer by the name of Gridley Bryant.

Willard taught as a carpenter with his father, a farmer who did carpentry in the winters; he went to Boston in 1804, work during the day and reading books of architecture and drawing in the evenings. His handiness as a carver enhanced so rapidly that he was employed for carved architectural details for many important late Federal and Greek revival buildings in Boston, the Ionic and Corinthian capitals for the steeple of Park Street Church, built in 1810 and in the same year he carved the eagle for the pediment of the new Custom House. In 1818 he made a model of the capitol at Washington for Charles Bullfinch, than busy on the Massachusetts State House, and later did several works of this sort, among which were models of the Pantheon and the Parthenon for Edward Everett. From wood carving he twisted to stone carving, and in 1820 was engaged on the Ionic capitals and other stonework of the Episcopal St Paul’s Church, the first illustration of Greek revival architecture in Boston. By 1821 Willard had become so victorious that he gave classes in architecture and drawing in his studio near St Paul’s; there Horatio Greenough was a pupil. Willard added ship figureheads to his craft, from 1823.

In Framingham, Massachusetts, Willard’s First Baptist Church of 1826 still stands, at the present the oldest building in the town. The Norfolk County law court in Dedham, Massachusetts is also his work. In the similar year he was also architect of Divinity Hall, Harvard Divinity School. Willard also designed the Greek Revival Framingham Village Hall. The Gothic Revival Mission Church of St. John the Evangelist on Bowdoin Street, Boston, dated to 1831, is also possibly his design.He is credited with designing some of the first hot-air central heating in an American building. In 1829 his recent pupil, the brilliant young architect Isaiah Rogers, considered the innovative Tremont House in Boston. This was the first American hotel to have indoor plumbing and it became the prototype of a modern, first-class American hotel.

In 1865 William W. Wheildon wrote a Memoir of Solomon Willard, Architect and Superintendent of the Bunker Hill Monument published by the Massachusetts: Monument Association, which is the primary source for his biographers.

Thomas Sully (June 19, 1783 – November 5, 1872) was a well-known American (English-born) painter, frequently of portraits.

Life and career

Sully was born in Horn castle, Lincolnshire, England, to the actors Matthew and Sarah Sully. In March 1792 the Sullys and their nine children immigrated to Richmond, Virginia, where Thomas’s uncle manages a theater. The boys attend school in New York City until 1794, when his mother died and he returns to Richmond. By July of that year the family was in Charleston, South Carolina. After a brief apprenticeship to an insurance broker who recognized his creative talent, at age 12 or thereabouts Sully begin painting and considered with his brother-in-law Jean Belzons (active 1794–1812), a French miniaturist, until they had a falling-out in 1799. He then returned to Richmond to learn “miniature & Device painting” from his elder brother Lawrence Sully (1769–1804). After Lawrence Sully’s death, Thomas Sully married his sister-in-law, Lawrence’s widow, Sarah Annis Sully and not only take on the raising of Lawrence’s children but have a further nine children with Sarah himself. Among the children were Alfred Sully, Mary Chester Sully (Mrs John Neagle), Jane Cooper Sully Darley, Blanche, Rosalie Sully, and Thomas Wilcocks Sully.

Sully became a professional painter at age 18 in 1801. He studied face-painting under Gilbert Stuart in Boston for three weeks. After some time in Virginia with this brother, Sully inspired to New York, after which he moved to Philadelphia in 1806, where he resides for the remainder of his life. In 1809 he travels to London for nine months of learn under Benjamin West.

Sully’s 1824 portraits of John Quincy Adams, who became President within the year, and then the Marquis de Lafayette appear to have brought him to the forefront of his day. His Adams portrait may be seen in the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Many famous Americans of the day had their portraits painted by him. In 1837-1838 he was in London to paint Queen Victoria at the demand of Philadelphia’s St. George’s Society. His daughter Blanche assisted him as the Queen’s “stand-in”, modeling the Queen’s costume when she was not obtainable. One of Sully’s portraits of Thomas Jefferson is own by the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society at the University of Virginia and hangs in that school’s Rotunda. Another Jefferson portrait, this one head-to-toe, hangs at West Point.

Sully’s own index indicate that he produced 2631 paintings from 1801, most of which are now in the United States. His style resembles that of Thomas Lawrence. Though best known as a portrait painter, Sully also made past pieces and landscapes. An example of the former is the 1819 Passage of the Delaware, now on show at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Sully died in Philadelphia on November 5, 1872, where he had spent the greater part of his long and successful career. He is buried in the Laurel Hill burial ground. His book Hints to young painters was published after his death. Sully was a great-uncle of the New Orleans-based architect, also named Thomas Sully (1855-1939).

Washington Allston Washington Allston was born in November 5, 1779 - July 9, 1843 was a U.S. poet and significant painter, born in Waccamaw, South Carolina. Allston pioneer America’s Romantic group of landscape painting. He was well known throughout his lifetime for his experiments with dramatic subject matter and his bold use of light and atmospheric color.

Education and travel

Allston graduated from Harvard College in 1800, and then sails to Europe, where he exhausted the next three years studying art at the Royal Academy in London, England, of which the Anglo-American painter Benjamin West was then the president.

From 1803 to 1808 he visited the great museums of Paris and for a number of years those of Italy, where he met Coleridge, his lifelong friend. Samuel F. B. Morse was one of Allston’s art pupils and accompanies Allston to Europe in 1811. After wandering throughout Western Europe, Allston finally settled in London, where he won reputation and prizes for his pictures. He was the uncle of the artists George Whiting Flagg and Jared Bradley Flagg, both of whom intentional in painting under him.

Recognition

Flourmill’s Flight, 1819.Allston was from time to time called the “American Titian” because his style resembles the great Venetian Renaissance artists in their display of dramatic color contrast. His work greatly prejudiced the development of U.S. landscape painting. Also, the themes of many paintings were strained from literature, especially Biblical stories.

His artistic mastermind was much accepted by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Ralph Waldo Emerson was strongly influenced by his paintings and poems, but so were both Sophia Peabody-who married Nathaniel Hawthorne-and Margaret Fuller. Allston also wrote a good deal of verse including The Sylphs of the Seasons (1813) and The Two Painters, a send-up. He also shaped a novel, Monaldi.
In 1818 he returns to the United States and live in Cambridge, Massachusetts for 25 years, where he died on July 9, 1843, at age 64.