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List of illustrations

  • Gallery of the Louvre
  • Key to the People and Art in Samuel F. B. Morse's Gallery of the Louvre
  • Samuel Finley Breese Morse
  • Self-Portrait
  • Portrait of Benjamin West
  • Dead Man Restored to Life by Touching the Bones of the Prophet Elisha
  • The House of Representatives
  • Portrait of Mrs. Morse and Two Children
  • List of Commissions
  • Miracle of Saint Mark
  • Sketch of Beatrice Cenci
  • James Fenimore Cooper
  • Francis I, Study for Gallery of the Louvre
  • George Clarke
  • Promissory Note from George Hyde Clarke for Gallery of the Louvre
  • Draftsman in the Oratory of S. Andrea, S. Gregorio al Celio
  • Project for the Grand Gallery of the Louvre
  • Grand Gallery of the Louvre, Showing Visitors and Artists Copying Paintings at Easels
  • View of the Salon of 1785
  • View of the Salon Carré of the Louvre in 1831
  • The Balance of Painters
  • A Day When You Do Not Pay—Twenty-Five-Degree Heat (Un jour ou l'on ne paye pas. Vingt-cinq degres de chaleur)
  • Parie, Palais du Louvre, La Grande Galerie [Patras]
  • The Brussels Picture Gallery of the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria (1614–1662)
  • Picture Gallery with Views of Modern Rome
  • The Tribuna of the Uffizi
  • Benjamin West's Picture Gallery
  • View of the Grande Galerie of the Louvre
  • Interior of the British Institution
  • View of the Salon Carré of the Louvre in 1831, detail
  • Main Gallery of the Louvre, Paris
  • Charles I at the Hunt
  • The Artist in His Museum
  • Interior of Peale's Museum
  • Canna Indica L.
  • Cabinet of Curiosities
  • Musei Wormiani Historia
  • Morse Family Portrait
  • The Court of Death
  • The Choir of the Capuchin Church in Rome
  • Ad for the exhibition of Gallery of the Louvre
  • Artemis, goddess of the hunt, known as Diane de Versailles
  • Borghese Vase
  • La Salle des Saisons du Louvre
  • Liberty Leading the People
  • America
  • Diane
  • Sculpture Gallery, Boston Athenaeum
  • Study for The House of Representatives
  • Sketch of Francis I (Study for Gallery of the Louvre)
  • John William Draper
  • Still-Life
  • Still-Life, detail
  • Gallery of the Louvre installed at the National Gallery of Art
  • Samuel Morse (1791–1872) on Board the Cruise Ship Sully
  • Key to the Pictures
  • White Room (Salle blanche)
  • Sketch for electromagnet
  • Reproduction of Hippolyte Pixii's 1832 Electromagnetic Generator (Machine magnéto-électrique de Hippolyte Pixii 1832)
  • Cover for The New Semaphore Signal Book
  • Page from Samuel F. B. Morse's Sully sketchbook with his first plans for the telegaph and numerical code
  • The House of Representatives, detail
  • The Painter's Studio
  • Louvre 3, Paris, 1989
  • Parliament
  • The End Crowns the Work (Vanitas Still Life with a Skull with Laurel—Cornat Opus Finis)
  • Canvas stretcher telegraph
  • Landscape Composition: Helicon and Aganippe (Allegorical Landscape of New York University)
  • Gallery of the Louvre, detail, artist's initials on back
  • Gallery of the Louvre, detail, Morse and his pupil
  • Gallery of the Louvre, detail, artist thought to be Richard West Habersham
  • Gallery of the Louvre, detail, female artist at right
  • Joseph Gales
  • Gallery of the Louvre, detail, Cooper family and Murillo's Holy Family
  • Beggar Boy
  • The Union of Design and Color
  • Wedding Feast at Cana
  • Descent from the Cross
  • Tomyris, Queen of the Scyths, Ordering the Head of Cyrus Lowered into a Vessel of Blood
  • The Holy Family
  • Francis I
  • Supper at Emmaus
  • Disembarkation of Cleopatra at Tarsus
  • Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria with Saint Sebastian
  • Landscape—Composition: In the Catskills
  • Dying Hercules
  • Deianeira and the Centaur Nessus
  • The Angel Leaving the Family of Tobias
  • The Tribute Money
  • The Presentation in the Temple in the Dark Manner
  • Gallery of the Louvre, detail, showing the Cooper family and the artist thought to be Richard West Habersham
  • The Gun Foundry
  • An Artist's Studio
  • Gallery of the Louvre, detail, before treatment, showing abrasion from previous cleaning
  • Gallery of the Louvre, detail, showing damage probably caused by rolling up the canvas while the paint was still wet
  • Gallery of the Louvre, detail, showing Morse's repainting of the damaged wall without the decorative design
  • Gallery of the Louvre, detail, the Grande Galerie before inpainting
  • Gallery of the Louvre, detail, the Grande Galerie after treatment
  • Descriptive Catalogue of the Pictures, Thirty-seven in Number, from the Most Celebrated Masters, Copied into the Gallery of the Louvre
  • Key to the Pictures
  • Gallery of the Louvre
  • Gallery of the Louvre
  • Catalogue of the Pictures Copied in the Picture of the Gallery of the Louvre
  • Catalogue of the Pictures Copied in the Picture of the Gallery of the Louvre
  • Catalogue of the Pictures Copied in the Picture of the Gallery of the Louvre
  • Catalogue of the Pictures Copied in the Picture of the Gallery of the Louvre
Free
Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
Contents
Author
PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Free
Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
~KNOWN TODAY primarily for his role in the development of the electromagnetic telegraph and Morse code, Samuel F. B. Morse began his career as a painter. His monumental Gallery of the Louvre was the culmination of an extended period of study in Europe. Upon his return to the United States, Morse exhibited the work only twice, in New York and New...
PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Free
Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
~THIS PROJECT BEGAN in earnest with the extensive conservation treatment of Gallery of the Louvre undertaken by Lance Mayer and Gay Myers beginning in late 2010. Over the course of the treatment, we spent many hours together, examining Morse’s canvas and conducting interviews for a video documentary of the painting and its conservation produced for...
Author
PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Free
Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
Key to the People and Art in Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre​
Author
PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
IN NOVEMBER 1829, Samuel F. B. Morse (fig. 1) boarded a ship bound for London, the first stop on what would become a nearly three-year tour of England, Italy, and France. He was at the height of his artistic powers. Still reeling from the premature death of his beloved wife, Lucretia Pickering Walker Morse, as...
Author
PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Related print edition pages: pp.15-29
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00223.001

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Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
Contexts
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PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
~AS MORSE SAILED HOME from France in 1832, his large painting of the Louvre rolled up in storage belowdecks, he alternated between confidence and despair about the prospects of the fine arts in America. Despite a career marked to that point mostly by professional frustration and meager patronage, he hoped his arresting image of the Louvre would break through...
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PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Related print edition pages: pp.35-44
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00223.002

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Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
~SAMUEL F. B. MORSE’S Gallery of the Louvre (plate 1) is one of three extant canvases from 1831 that depict the northwest wall of the Salon Carré: the...
Author
PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Related print edition pages: pp.47-57
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00223.003

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Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
~SAMUEL F. B. MORSE was not the first artist to paint a picture of a celebrated art collection, nor was he the first to edit or embellish the collection...
Author
PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Related print edition pages: pp.61-73
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00223.004

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Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
~TRANSLATING THE grand manner history painting favored in Europe into themes and ideas that might resonate with his own young republic, Samuel F. B. Morse created two monumental paintings for exhibition to American audiences. First he explored the workings of...
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PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Related print edition pages: pp.77-83
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00223.005

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Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
Contents
Author
PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
~PAINTING GETS ALL the attention in Gallery of the Louvre. And for good reason. Morse’s canvas features copies of thirty-eight paintings. He included four figures who are making paintings or drawings. He envisioned Gallery of the Louvre as proof of his own painterly talents. And he hoped it would educate his countrymen about European art.
Author
PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Related print edition pages: pp.89-96
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00223.006

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Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
~FOR MOST PEOPLE, the name Samuel F. B. Morse conjures up something entirely different from his Gallery of the Louvre: the dashes and dots that make up Morse code and its attendant device, the electromagnetic telegraph. The...
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PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Related print edition pages: pp.101-107
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00223.007

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Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
~WHY DID the painter of Gallery of the Louvre (plate 1) invent the electromagnetic telegraph? To answer this question, we must go back to the fall of 1832, when these two inventions crossed paths.
Author
PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Related print edition pages: pp.111-125
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00223.008

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Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
~MY TITLE PLAYS ON Morse’s prophecy of the electromagnetic telegraph: “If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any desired part of the circuit I see no reason why intelligence might not be transmitted instantaneously by...
Author
PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Related print edition pages: pp.131-145
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00223.009

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Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
~SAMUEL F. B. MORSE’S Gallery of the Louvre (plate 1) is a profoundly religious sermon in paint. Though modern, museum-trained eyes tend to see the picture in light of aesthetic appreciation and art connoisseurship, the...
Author
PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Related print edition pages: pp.149-164
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00223.010

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Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
~WHY IS IT that certain American places have the emotional intensity of old master paintings? The American places I have in mind do not literally look like paintings by Rembrandt, but they sometimes have the gravity and pathos, the infinite depth and unaccountable lightness, of...
Author
PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Related print edition pages: pp.169-182
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00223.011

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Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
~SAMUEL F. B. MORSE’S Gallery of the Louvre (plate 1) is darker and more yellow than it was when it was new. Such discoloration of nineteenth-century paintings is most often caused by a layer of varnish that was originally...
Author
PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Related print edition pages: pp.185-189
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00223.012

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Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
Appendix: Descriptive Catalogue of the Pictures, 1833
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PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
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Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
Timeline
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PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
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Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
Selected Bibliography
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PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
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Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
Index
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Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
Contributors
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PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
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Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
Photography Credits
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Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
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