William Kloss
Samuel F. B. Morse
New York /Abrams 1988
Stron 160, format: 23x31 cm, papier kredowy
Książka w bardzo dobrym stanie - jedynym defektem jest lekko podniszczona obwoluta.
120 ilustracji, z czego 54 kolorowych.
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"Do you suppose it is the same Morse?" This question is often heard when people are viewing paintings by Samuel E B. Morse in museums. Those who do not know that he painted are surprised to find that the inventor of the telegraph was also an artist.
This volume in the acclaimed Library of American Art presents a substantial number of Morse's paintings, examines them critically, and traces the artistic and intellectual life of an intriguing man who not only changed history with his invention, but recorded history with his painting. That it was a record of American people rather than American events was a disappointment for Morse. It should not be for us. We can recognize, as James Thomas Flexner did thirty years ago, that Morse practiced portraiture "without affectation [and] gave full sway to that creative realism" which was the special mark of his genius.
William Kloss is the author also of a volume documenting the treasures of the National Museum of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution. In Samuel F. B. Morse he explores how the art world developed in America in the early nineteenth century, one of its important formative periods. He weaves the passions and politics of art together with the events of the day. He explains the growth of the American art market and the influences of Europe and England on American artists, adding numerous quotations by or about Morse's sitters, many of which have been culled from genealogies, memoirs, diaries, and other generally inaccessible records. The resulting text offers a colorful and coherent story that has great relevance to an understanding of the art world of our own day.
A chronology, bibliography, and index round out the volume.
