Samuel F. B. Morse

by Paul J. Staiti

Overview

This is the definitive study of one of America's major artists and inventors, Samuel F.B. Morse (1791-1872). It covers his prodigious achievements in painting and technology, his passionate cultural ambitions, and his key role in the historic development of American art. The book imaginatively combines intellectual biography with interpretation of more than one hundred pictures. Three chapters consider Morse's most extraordinary artistic achievements: The House of Representatives, The Gallery of the Louvre, and The National Academy of Design. In a final chapter on the electromagnetic telegraph, an invention that imprinted his name on our language, there is a special discussion of the conceptual relationship between artistic and mechanical inventions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107403369
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/26/2012
Series:	Cambridge Monographs on American Artists
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	338
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.80(d)

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Preface; 1. Education; 2. Itinerancy; 3. House of Representatives; 4. New York; 5. National Academy of Design; 6. Gallery of the Louvre; 7. Electromagnetism; 8. Epilogue; Notes; Appendix I. Key to Morse's picture of the House of Representatives; Appendix II. Descriptive catalogue of the pictures, thirty-seven in number, from the most celebrated masters, copies into the Gallery of the Louvre; Checklist of paintings and sculpture; Selected bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"...a well-studied and successful book on Samuel F.B. Morse's important paintings, with careful writing on his relationships and activities...The book should be much used and influential." ISIS

"By far the best single book on Morse as an artist and 19th-century figure." T.J. McCormick, Wheaton College (MA), in Choice

"By placing Morse in an artistic, social, and political context, Staiti has given us a clearer picture of the man than we have heretofore had...Staiti's book is an important addition to American art scholarship." David Meschutt, Winterthur Portfolio

From the Publisher

This scholarly volume serves as the first full-scale study of Samuel F.B. Morse, artist, inventor, and early promoter of the National Academy of Design. Morse hoped to inspire the American public with such history paintings as ``The House of Representatives'' and ``The Gallery of the Louvre'' but had to support himself through portraiture and finally abandoned painting as a profession in 1837. His genius lay in combining existing elements in new ways, an approach he applied to both art and mechanics, and he is remembered largely for his experiments with the electromagnetic telegraph. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this book is Staiti's discussion of Morse's elitist, xenophobic, and volatile personality. Appendixes include a checklist of the artist's works. Appropriate for specialized art history collections.-- Kathleen Eagen Johnson, Historic Hudson Valley, Tarrytown, N.Y.

Library Journal