TitleSamuel F. B. Morse
Artist
Horatio Greenough
(American, 1805 - 1852)
Date1831 (cast 1843)
MediumPlaster
DimensionsOverall: 21 1/8 × 13 1/8 × 9 1/2 in.
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY, By order of the NAD Council, 1843
Object number1982.2566
Label Text"Mr. Greenough has just completed a bust of me, which all say is an excellent likeness. . . . It may be in New York in season for the exhibition of 1832." So wrote Samuel F. B. Morse from Florence in April 1831 to John L. Morton, secretary of the Academy. Greenough and Morse shared quarters in Paris in the autumn of that year. The sculptor was in the city to execute from life a bust of the Marquis de Lafayette; Morse arrived in September and painted his monumental Gallery of the Louvre (Terra Foundation) there. At the end of the year Greenough returned to Florence, where the marble bust of Morse (Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.) was carved, early in 1832. In December 1843, the Council of the National Academy of Design directed that Morse "be requested to permit a copy in plaster to be made of his marble bust and that the same be placed at the head of the council room...." In 1982, after being thought lost nearly fifty years, this plaster was rediscovered among the Academy school's collection of plaster casts from the antique.
1803
1803
