Colleen Moore

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Colleen Moore

Artist Mary Sully (Dakota Sioux, 1896 - 1963)

Date1920s to 1940s

DimensionsTop panel: 12.875 x 18 inches
Middle panel: 12 x 19 inches
Bottom panel: 9.5 x 12 inches

MediumColored pencil, black ink, gilt, white paint, pastel crayon, on paper

ClassificationDrawings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

2026.1

Not on View

DescriptionThe top panel clearly imagines the fantastical dollhouse created for Colleen Moore. Sully drew it raised on a blue platform, with the house on high. Intercrossed crutches rest leaning against the blue wall, referencing the children who benefited from the charity raised by the touring Dollhouse. In the gated yard are to scale swings, rings, balls, train sets, wagons, table and chairs, and small animals. The grand house, with multiple turrets, is located on top of a perfect green hill, with evenly spaced trees growing on it. The palate completely changes in the middle panel where against the navy-blue ground the image of the Dollhouse castle is repeated as a small decorative icon in between horizontal rows of modern abstract white forms. The bottom panel again references Native American weaving, distilling the above subjects to geometric forms of triangles for the Dollhouse rooftops, to interlocking triangles for the trees surrounding it. The tones again change radically; Sully has limited them to green, brown and black, which affectively shifts the image to ground relationship.

Published ReferencesDeloria, Phil, Becoming Mary Sully: Towards an American Indian Abstract, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2019, repr.