SAMUEL F. B. MORSE AS PAINTER.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In your issue of the 19th ult. you published a letter from an American lady reminding your readers that Samuel Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph, was eminent not only as a man of science but as a painter. May I be allowed to supplement this letter by one or two facts which have, perhaps, at the present moment a special interest? Morse came to England in 1812, as a young man of twenty-one, to study painting under Washington Allston, an American artist settled in London. Ile had scarcely arrived when war broke out between Great Britain and the United States; but his studies were not thereby interrupted, and it was after the outbreak of war that be was awarded the gold medal by the Society of Arts for his statuette of " the dying Hercules "—his first attempt at modelling. In the spring of 1813 his large painting (8ft. by Oft. 6in.) of " the dying Hercules "—for which the model had been made—was exhibited at the Royal Academy and praised by critics as one of the pictures of the year. Morse's letters home at this time are a very curious study of the feelings of an American boy in these circum- stances, and they throw a most interesting light on the whole tewper of the times. One quotation must suffice :—
"I long to be at hem, to be ha the navy, and teach these
insolent Englishmen how to respect us. The Marquis of Wellesley has achieved a great victory in Spain, and bids fair to drive the French out very soon. At this I rejoice, as ought every man who abhors tyranny and loves liberty. I wish the British success against everything but my country. I often say with Cowper : ' England, with all thy faults, I love thee still.'"
During this time another American, Benjamin West—then at the height of his reputation—was President of the Royal Academy, and he did much to encourage the aspirations and mould the taste of the young painter. It was the age of the " grand style," and in view of the fact that "portraits by Morse are to-day valved at several thousand dollars," it is amusing to read what Morse himself thought about them. For him they were "pot-boilers." There was a fear that lack of means would force him to leave England, and he wrote home:— " If I find that I cannot support myself, that I am con- tracting debts which I have no prospect of paying, I shall then return home and settle dawn into a mere portrait-painter for some time, till I can obtain sufficient to return to Europe again; for 1 cannot be happy unless I am pursuing the intel- lectual branch of the art. Portraits have none of it; land- scape has some of it; but history has it wholly. I am certain you would not be satisfied to see me sit down quietly, spending my time in painting portraits, throwing away the talents which Heaven has given mo for the higher branches of art, and devoting my time only to the inferior."
Those who are interested in Morse, whether as a painter or a man of science, will find a wealth of further information in the two fascinating volumes, published in 1914, under the title Samuel F. B. Horse: His Letters and Journals, by his youngest son, Mr. Edward Lind Morse, whom I have the happiness still to count among my friends.—I am, Sir, lie.,
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