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Samuel F. B. Morse American
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 756
The full-length portrait of Susan Walker Morse (1819–1885), the eldest daughter of the artist, was painted during the crucial years of the invention of Morse's telegraph (ca. 1835–37). The painting shows the girl at about the age of seventeen, sitting with a sketchbook in her lap and pencil in hand with her eyes raised in contemplation. Although traditionally described as a Muse, the figure is more likely a personification of the art of drawing or design. Morse drew on the full extent of his European training, taking from the works of Rubens and Veronese in what was to be an ambitious farewell to his career as an artist. Stymied by a lack of financial success, he abandoned painting for science and inventing. This painting was first exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1837, where it won enthusiastic praise. Susan married Edward Lind in 1839 and moved to his sugar plantation in Puerto Rico, returning often to New York to spend extended periods with her father, who had been left a widower when Susan was just six. She gradually grew less and less happy with her husband and plantation life. Lind died in 1882; in 1885, Susan set out to return to New York permanently but tragically was lost at sea.
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Artwork Details
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Title: Susan Walker Morse (The Muse)
Artist: Samuel F. B. Morse (American, Charlestown, Massachusetts 1791–1872 New York)
Date: ca. 1836–37
Culture: American
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 73 3/4 x 57 5/8 in. (187.3 x 146.4 cm)
Credit Line: Bequest of Herbert L. Pratt, 1945
Accession Number: 45.62.1
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Timeline of Art History
Chronology
The United States and Canada, 1800-1900 A.D.
Museum Publications
A Walk Through The American Wing
Nineteenth-Century America: Paintings and Sculpture
The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings
Masterpieces of American Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art
"Faces of a New Nation: American Portraits of the 18th and Early 19th Centuries": The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 61, no. 1 (Summer, 2003)
The American Wing at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The American Wing: A Guide
American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915
American Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 1, A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born by 1815
American Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 1, Painters Born by 1815
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The American Wing at The Met
The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works by African American, Euro American, Native American, and Latin American artists, ranging from the colonial to early-modern period.
