But the public shouldn’t necessarily bear the blame. “There’s a kind of chronic disappointment in the lack of American culture, the lack of American refinement,” said Staiti. Nathaniel Hawthorne joked, “Did anyone ever see Washington naked? It is inconceivable.” The statue soon got the boot, moving to the less prominent east lawn in 1843.Īrtists like Morse and Greenough saw their failure as a direct result of lowbrow U.S. Washington’s bare chest roused both public ire and mockery. The sculptor took cues from ancient Greece, modelling the first president after Zeus and clothing him in a toga and sandals. In 1832, Horatio Greenough was commissioned by Congress to create a memorial to George Washington for the rotunda of the U.S. Morse wasn’t the only American artist of his generation to completely misread his audience. “The Gallery of the Louvre is an example of his putting his eggs in one basket. “He’s hoping for something grander and bigger, and he tries it,” said Staiti. Despite the status of his sitters, Morse found the work deeply unfulfilling. Morse was forced to return to portraiture, earning a living by memorializing prominent Americans such as John Adams and Eli Whitney. And so it’s a rocky road for him making ends meet.” “He has to inject himself into 19th-century America, which is just different. “His training is basically a Royal Academy, 18th-century model,” said Staiti. The history paintings he had fallen so in love with in Europe-ones where mythological or historical events were transformed into classical, idealized scenes-were of no interest to Americans. Upon returning home to the United States, however, the artist experienced a rude awakening. Morse developed a taste for Romanticism in England, even garnering praise for a monumental painting of Hercules in the throes of death. After graduation he decided to focus on the arts, studying first under painter Washington Allston in Boston and then Benjamin West at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. But he did have a substantive artistic career, especially in New York.”īorn in Massachusetts in 1791, Morse studied mathematics and philosophy at Yale, where he enjoyed painting miniature portraits far more than attending class.
“The telegraph was the first time that communications and travel became different things, so Morse is rightfully famous for that. “His painting career got completely overshadowed by the telegraph, which was earth-shattering,” explained Morse scholar Paul Staiti, a professor at Mount Holyoke College. His name graces the language of dots and dashes still in use by radio operators today. to Baltimore in 1844 the words have since become indelible.
He sent the first message, “What hath God wrought?”, from Washington, D.C. Morse began to dabble in electromagnetics after his stay in Europe, in experiments that would eventually lead to the invention of the telegraph. This painting, he was certain, would finally propel him to fame.īut as it turned out, his true masterpiece-the creation that would earn him international celebrity-was not a painting at all. Morse intended for the painting, which depicted some three dozen of the Louvre’s greatest works displayed together in an imagined museum gallery, to serve as a sweeping art history lesson for the American people. Tucked away in the hold was Gallery of the Louvre (1831–1833), a massive six-by-nine-foot canvas that would take him 14 months to complete. In 1832, following a three-year European tour, Samuel F.B.
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