Happy Birthday Samuel Morse

Artist and inventor Samuel F. B. Morse was born on this day in 1791.

In honor of his many accomplishments, we present a painting by Samuel Morse, as well as a portrait bust of Morse by artist Horatio Greenough from our collection.

The inventor of the telegraph, Samuel F. B. Morse was also a founder of the National Academy of Design and a well-known portrait painter, whose works included portraits of the Marquis de Lafayette and Presidents John Adams and James Monroe. The Goldfish Bowl (Mrs. Richard Cary Morse and Family), a circa 1835 oil on canvas, is of his sister-in-law and her children— probably painted in the parlor of their New York home. Mrs. Morse appears to epitomize domestic virtue, and the interior furnishings indicate the neoclassical style of the period. The wide-eyed child in the foreground was the grandmother of Mrs. J. Wright Rumbough, who donated this painting to the NMAA.

Visit our on-line exhibition, Secrets of the Dark Chamber: Art of the American Daguerreotype, to learn how Morse brought the Daguerreotype, an early photographic technique, to America.

Source: "New Perspective on the Permanent Collection." National Museum of American Art Calendar of Events (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, March 1984).

Pictured top: Samuel F. B. Morse, (1791–1872), The Goldfish Bowl (Mrs. Richard Cary Morse and Family),about 1835, oil on wood, 29 5/8 x 24 7/8 in., Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Gift of Mrs. J. Wright Rumbough in loving memory of her father Gilbert Colgate.

Pictured bottom: Horatio Greenough, (1805–1852), Samuel F.B. Morse,1831, marble, 19 1/2 x 12 x 8 3/4 in., Gift of Edward L. Morse.