000			01936cam a2200265 a 4500
001			064853
005			20231009193153.0
008			101216s1988 nyua b f001 0 eng
010			_a88005879
020			_a0810915316
050	0	0	_aND237.M75 _bK56 1988
082	0	0	_a759.1 KLO
100	1		_aKloss, William
245	1	0	_aSamuel F.B. Morse _c/ William Kloss
260			_aNew York _b: H.N. Abrams in association with the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution _c, 1988.
300			_a160 p. _b: ill. (some col.) _c; 32 cm.
490	1		_aLibrary of American art
500			_aIncludes index.
504			_aBibliography: p. 155-156.
520			_aThe inventor of the electric telegraph was also a portrait painter, ``the finest of his generation'' in Kloss's judgment. Morse went to England to paint in 1811; he returned to America four years later, converted to the academic ``grand style'' that was already in decline. That he continually broke through the artifice of that style in works of startling power is attested to by the color reproductions in this handsome biographical study. Morse could be softly romantic as in his portrait of poet-journalist William Cullen Bryant; yet the pictures that speak to us most directly are unsparingly realistic: witness his 81-year-old John Adams seething with bitterness and physical decline, his full-length study of the gruff Marquis de Lafayette, his pugnacious Governor De Witt Clinton. Morse held Calvinistic, pro-slavery and anti-Catholic views; once he became famous as an inventor, he turned his back on America to settle in France. These circumstances, suggests Kloss, National Geographic Society art consultant, help explain why he is not as well-known an artist as he ought to be.
600	1	0	_aMorse, Samuel Finley Breese _d, 1791-1872
650		4	_aPortrait painting, American
710	2		_aNational Museum of American Art (U.S.)
942			_cMO
999			_c263246 _d263246