Samuel F. B. Morse 1791-1872

Private Collection, Washington, D.C.
Eunice Chambers, Hartsville, South Carolina
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1967

New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Painter: Samuel Finley Breese Morse, 1932
New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Art Gallery, American Art from Alumni Collections, April-June, 1968
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Reynolda House, Museum of American Art, Self-Image: The Portrait in American from Copley to Close, August 2006-January 2007

William Kloss, Samuel F.B. Morse, New York, 1988, p. 59, illustrated

Lined; under UV: varnish make it very difficult to read through though there are some obvious small touches of inpainting in sitter's face and in parts of the background mostly to the left side of the figure.
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Samuel F.B. Morse, famous for his invention of the telegraph and co-founder of the Morse code, was also a highly accomplished painter. The son of a New England minister, he graduated from Yale in 1810 and embarked on his artistic career. He traveled to London in 1811, and studied historical painting which was then considered the highest form of artistic expression. Morse's time in London was transformative as he experienced the appreciation and encouragement behind the arts that was lacking in America.

Morse returned to America in 1815 and set up a studio in Boston, Massachusetts. Although he was attracting attention as an artist he was not profiting financially. From 1817 to 1819, Morse traveled extensively to find work and spent his winters in Charlestown, South Carolina. Word spread of his artistic talent and he was subsequently commissioned to paint portraits of leading citizens. Morse was eventually introduced to Alexander Calder, (1771-1849) the well-established cabinetmaker and builder. Calder was born in Scotland and eventually moved to Charlestown by 1796. Not only was he famous for his fine cabinetry and furniture making, he was also a shipbuilder and business owner. Morse's portrait speaks to Calder's powerful name and status that had spread throughout the South.

"In Morse's fine portrait, Calder is a confident, upright, unaffected Scotsman. His ruddy-skinned, heavy-lidded face shines out atop a powerful torso clad in a dark green jacket and crisp white stock and collar. The rather arbitrary bold red swatch of drapery at the right makes an effective counterpoint to the dark jacket, while the aquamarine sky touched with rose lends a quiet note of approaching evening." (William Kloss, Samuel F.B. Morse, 1988, p. 62)