Susan Walker Morse (The Muse)

Samuel F. B. Morse

ca. 1836–37 · Oil on canvas · The American Wing

This full-length portrait of Susan Walker Morse (1819–1885), the eldest daughter of the artist, was painted in the years when he was developing the electric telegraph. Depicted around the age of seventeen, she sits in an imagined grand setting with a sketchbook in her lap and pencil in hand, her eyes raised in contemplation. Her Muse-like air prompted the canvas’s informal title. Here, Morse revealed the full extent of his European training, inspired by the art of Peter Paul Rubens and Paolo Veronese, in a lofty image that would become a farewell to his career as a portraitist. Impeded by a lack of commercial success, he ultimately abandoned art for science.

Artist

Samuel F. B. Morse

Date

ca. 1836–37

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Bequest of Herbert L. Pratt, 1945