Lily Pons

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Lily Pons

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

2026.2

Not on View

DescriptionThe renowned opera singer is represented in the top panel with lilies floating in a pond in the in the bottom portion of the panel. Surrounding the pond is a fence/bridge of musical notes, some of which have floated free and extend upward to the top of the paper. In the second panel the notes become the dominate imagery, straddling the lily pond beneath them. Each is contained within an implied rectangle with alternating higher lower relationships to one another, resembling a piano keyboard. In the bottom panel the imagery is simplified with three horizontal rows of red diamonds, a vertical band of white (lilies) and green and teal right-left borders.

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