"When I left Paris I was feeble in health, so much so that I was fearful of the effects of the journey to London, especially as I passed through villages suffering severely from the cholera. But I proceeded moderately, lodged the first night at Boulogne-sur-Mer, crossed to Dover in a severe southwest gale, and passed the next night at Canterbury, and the next day came to London. I think the ride did me good, and I have been exercising a great deal, riding and walking, since, and my general health is certainly improving. I am in hopes that the voyage will completely set me up again."



CHAPTER XX

Morse's life almost equally divided into two periods, artistic and scientific.—Estimate of his artistic ability by Daniel Huntington.—Also by Samuel Isham.—His character as revealed by his letters, notes, etc.— End of Volume I.

Morse's long life (he was eighty-one when he died) was almost exactly divided, by the nature of his occupations, into two equal periods. During the first, up to his forty-first year, he was wholly the artist, enthusiastic, filled with a laudable ambition to excel, not only for personal reasons, but, as appears from his correspondence, largely from patriotic motives, from a wish to rescue his country from the stigma of pure commercialism which it had incurred in the eyes of the rest of the world. It is true that his active brain and warm heart spurred him on to interest himself in many other things, in inventions of more or less utility, in religion, politics, and humanitarian projects; but next to his sincere religious faith, his art held chiefest sway, and everything else was made subservient to that.

During the latter half of his life, however, a new goddess was enshrined in his heart, a goddess whose cult entailed even greater self-sacrifice; keener suffering, both mental and physical; more humiliation to a proud and sensitive soul, shrinking alike from the jeers of the incredulous and the libels and plots of the envious and the unscrupulous.

While he plied his brush for many years after the conception of his epoch-making invention, it was with an ever lessening enthusiasm, with a divided interest. Art no longer reigned supreme; Invention shared the throne with her and eventually dispossessed her. It seems, therefore, fitting that, in closing the chronicle of Morse the artist, his rank in the annals of American art should be estimated as viewed by a contemporary and by the more impartial historian of the present day.

From a long article prepared by the late Daniel Huntington for Mr. Prime, I shall select the following passages:—

"My acquaintance with Professor Morse began in the spring of 1835, when I was placed under his care by my father as a pupil. He then lived in Greenwich Lane (now Greenwich Avenue), and several young men were studying art under his instruction.... He gave a short time every day to each pupil, carefully pointing out our errors and explaining the principles of art. After drawing for some time from casts with the crayon, he allowed us to begin the use of the brush, and we practised painting our studies from the casts, using black, white, and raw umber.

"I believe this method was of great use in enabling us early to acquire a good habit of painting. I only regret that he did not insist on our sticking to this kind of study a longer time and drill us more severely in it; but he indulged our hankering for color too soon, and, when once we had tasted the luxury of a full palette of colors, it was a dry business to go back to plain black and white.

"In the autumn of that year, 1835, he removed to spacious rooms in the New York University on Washington Square. In the large studio in the north wing he painted several fine portraits, among them the beautiful full-length of his daughter, Mrs. Lind. He also lectured before the students and a general audience, illustrating his subject by painted diagrams....

"Professor Morse's love of scientific experiments was shown in his artist life. He formed theories of color, tried experiments with various vehicles, oils, varnishes, and pigments. His studio was a kind of laboratory. A beautiful picture of his wife and two children was painted, he told me, with colors ground in milk, and the effect was juicy, creamy, and pearly to a degree. Another picture was commenced with colors mixed with beer; afterwards solidly impasted and glazed with rich, transparent tints in varnish. His theory of color is fully explained in the account of his life in Dunlap's 'Arts of Design.' He proved its truth by boxes and balls of various colors. He had an honest, solid, vigorous impasto, which he strongly insisted on in his instructions—a method which was like the great masters of the Venetian school. This method was modified in his practice by his studies under West in England, and by his intimacy with Allston, for whose genius he had a great reverence, and by whose way of painting he was strongly influenced.

"He was a lover of simple, unaffected truth, and this trait is shown in his works as an artist. He had a passion for color, and rich, harmonious tints run through his pictures, which are glowing and mellow, and yet pearly and delicate.

"He had a true painter's eye, but he was hindered from reaching the fame his genius promised as a painter by various distractions, such as the early battles of the Academy of Design in its struggles for life, domestic afflictions, and, more than all, the engrossing cares of his invention.



"The 'Hercules,' with its colossal proportions and daring attitude, is evidence of the zeal and courage of his early studies.... It is worthy of being carefully preserved in a public gallery, not only as an instance of successful study in a young artist (Morse was in his twenty-first year), but as possessing high artistic merit, and a force and richness which plainly show that, if his energies had not been diverted, he might have achieved a name in art equal to the greatest of his contemporaries....

"Professor Morse's world-wide fame rests, of course, on his invention of the electric telegraph; but it should be remembered that the qualities of mind which led to it were developed in the progress of his art studies, and if his paintings, in the various fields of history, portrait, and landscape, could be brought together, it would be found that he deserved an honored place among the foremost American artists."

This was an estimate of Morse's ability as a painter by a man of his own day, a friend and pupil. As this would, naturally, be somewhat biased, it will be more to the point to see what a competent critic of the present day has to say.

Mr. Samuel Isham, in his authoritative "History of American Painting," published in 1910, after giving a brief biographical sketch of Morse and telling why he came to abandon the brush, thus sums up:—

"It was a serious loss, for Morse, without being a genius, was yet, perhaps, better calculated than another to give in pictures the spirit of the difficult times from 1830 to 1860. He was a man sound in mind and body, well born, well educated, and both by birth and education in sympathy with his time. He had been abroad, had seen good work, and received sound training. His ideals were not too far ahead of his public. Working as he did under widely varying conditions, his paintings are dissimilar, not only in merit but in method of execution; even his portraits vary from thin, free handling to solid impasto. Yet in the best of them there is a real painter's feeling for his material; the heads have a soundness of construction and a freshness in the carnations that recall Raeburn rather than West; the poses are graceful or interesting, the costumes are skilfully arranged, and in addition he understands perfectly the character of his sitters, the men and women of the transition period, shrewd, capable, but rather commonplace, without the ponderous dignity of Copley's subjects or the cosmopolitan graces of a later day.

"The struggles incident to the invention and development of telegraphy turned Morse from the practice of art, but up to the end of his life he was interested in it and aggressive in any scheme for its advancement."

I think that from the letters, notes, etc., which I have in the preceding pages brought together, a clear conception of Morse's character can be formed. The dominant note was an almost childlike religious faith; a triumphant trust in the goodness of God even when his hand was wielding the rod; a sincere belief in the literal truth of the Bible, which may seem strange to us of the twentieth century; a conviction that he was destined in some way to accomplish a great good for his fellow men.

Next to love of God came love of country. He was patriotic in the best sense of the word. While abroad he stoutly upheld the honor of his native land, and at home he threw himself with vigor into the political discussions of the day, fighting stoutly for what he considered the right. While sometimes, in the light of future events, he seems to have erred in allowing his religious beliefs to tinge too much his political views, he was always perfectly sincere and never permitted expediency to brush aside conviction.

We have seen that wherever he went he had the faculty of inspiring respect and affection, and that an ever widening circle of friends admitted him to their intimacy, sought his advice, and confided in him with the perfect assurance of his ready sympathy.

A favorite Bible quotation of his was "Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you." He deeply deplored the necessity of making enemies, but he early in his career became convinced that no man could accomplish anything of value in this world without running counter either to the opinions of honest men, who were as sincere as he, or to the self-seeking of the dishonest and the unscrupulous. Up to this time he had had mainly to deal with the former class, as in his successful efforts to establish the National Academy of Design on a firm footing; but in the future he was destined to make many and bitter enemies of both classes. In the controversies which ensued he always strove to be courteous and just, even when vigorously defending his rights or taking the offensive. That he sometimes erred in his judgment cannot be denied, but the errors were honest, and in many cases were kindled and fanned into a flame by the crafty malice of third parties for their own pecuniary advantage.

So now, having followed him in his career as an artist, which, discouraging and troubled as it may often have seemed to him, was as the calm which precedes the storm to the years of privation and heroic struggle which followed, I shall bring this first volume to a close.

END OF VOLUME I