Samuel F. B. Morse

This 1990 volume represented the first fully developed study of the eminent American artist and inventor Samuel F. B. Morse (1791–1872).

Paul J. Staiti (Author)

9781107403369, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 26 January 2012

338 pages
27.9 x 21 x 1.8 cm, 0.76 kg

"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

This 1990 volume represented the first fully developed study of the eminent American artist and inventor Samuel F. B. Morse (1791–1872). It reveals his prodigious achievements in painting and technology, his passionate ambitions, and his key role in the development of American art. While covering the artist's entire career, Professor Staiti gives particular attention to three of his 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 Morse's name on our language, there is a discussion of the conceptual relationship between artistic and mechanical invention. Also contained in the book is the first comprehensive listing of the three hundred works of art, both extant and lost, that Morse is known to have produced. This landmark book offers an arresting profile of an enormously complex figure.

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.

Subject Areas: History of art & design styles: c 1800 to c 1900 [ACV]