Arthur Joseph Sulley

Arthur Joseph Sulley was a London art dealer specialising in Dutch Old Master paintings. Active in the art world for half a century, he started his career with Thomas McLean on the Haymarket (until 1892) before becoming a partner in the firm Lawrie & Co.    Sulley continued his work with the London firms of P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. and Thomas Agnew & Sons, the Galerie Sedelmeyer in Paris and M. Knoedler & Co. in New York. After travelling to the United States in 1895 and 1896, his important clients included Alexander Byers, Peter Arrell Browne Widener, and Henry Clay Frick. After Lawrie & Co. dissolved in 1904, Sulley founded A.J. Sulley & Co. together with John Mackillop Brown on New Bond Street in 1905.   Sulley was involved in a number of significant sales, including paintings by Anthony van Dyck, Frans Hals, and Johannes Vermeer (Girl Interrupted at Her Music). He is probably best known for his record-setting sale of Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Mill to Peter Widener for £100,000; it is now at the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington.    Arthur Sulley married Louisa A. Gordon in 1880. Until his death in 1930, Sulley conducted his business from his residence on 54 Grosvenor Street, London.   His firm, Arthur J. Sulley & Co., bought two Frans van Mieris paintings (Portrait of the Artist’s Wife, Cunera van der Cock and The Artist) from Francis Denzil Edward Baring 5th Baron Ashburton (1866-1938) in 1907. Records from the Kleinberger Galleries show their acquisition from Sulley & Co. in the same year. Sulley also sold _The Resurrection of Lazarus _by Peter Paul Rubens to Kleinberger on 24 October 1908. Franz Kleinberger sold all three paintings to the German-French collector Adolphe Schloss in 1907 and 1908. Sulley also appears as the dealer in the sale of Aelbert Cuyp’s work _Rooster and Hens _that was with the Schloss and Abraham Collection.      Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Joseph_Sulley https://www.nga.gov/collection/provenance-info.8666.html#biography https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.1201.pdf https://cdm16028.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16028coll23/id/6106/rec/1 https://cdm16028.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16028coll23/id/2260/rec/1