While F.O.C. Darley was 'the darling' of the Poe Circle in Philadelphia, all gave their strongest accolades to Thomas Sully, not only as a fine painter, but as the man they all loved, admired and respected, and whom they all felt was 'the Greatest Man Alive.'

is an 1840 portrait of the artist's daughter, by Thomas Sully (signed simply 'TS'), documented as an original 'Sully' by the artist himself, as well as by Sully's first biographers, Biddle and Fielding (painting 1690 on their list). This lovely portrait is also from the collection of Dr. Marion Rundell.

This painting depicts one of the primary hostesses of Philadelphia artistic 'conversaziones,' and the wife of Poe's publisher, George Rex Graham, was painted by Thomas Sully, in the 1830s, as documented by Sully himself, as well as by Biddle and Fielding. Both Edgar and Virginia Poe spent many pleasurable evenings at soirees hosted by the gregarious Grahams.

The style of this painting is very much the same as a painting Thomas Sully did of Virginia Poe, currently in the possession of the Poe family, but which will be reproduced for the first time in my book.

This is the only known portrait of Poe's mother, a prominent stage actor and singer of her period. Traditionally, this portrait has been regarded with reverence by Poe scholars, as a 'real painting of Eliza Poe.' But this 'portrait of Eliza Poe' is, at best, an amateur artist's attempt to reproduce a missing, or destroyed, miniature of Eliza, most likely the one certainly executed by Thomas Sully in 1803, when Eliza was being billed under her current married name, “Mrs. Hopkins.”

The prevailing theory among Sully scholars is this: if Thomas Sully did not enter a painting in his "Painting List," he did not execute the painting, period. I think this judgment is entirely too severe, as it turns a very nice and spontaneous man into one who was so obsessed by 'list making' that he never, ever 'slipped up.' That this is not the case is proven by the example given vis a vis Sully's portrait of Edgar A. Poe.