Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/216

HENRY CLAY IN 1841. AGE 64. PAINTED BY S. F. B. MORSE. NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.

From the original portrait painted by Samuel Finley Breese Morse, now in the possession of Mr. William. F. Havemeyer, New York. Canvas, 48 by 60 inches. Professor Morse, as he was commonly called, was born at Charlestown, Massachusetts, April 27, 1791, and died in New York, April 2, 1872. The later career of the distinguished inventor of the electric telegraph has hidden from many the knowledge that he began life as an artist. After being graduated by Yale College, where he partially supported himself by painting miniatures at five dollars each and profiles at one dollar, he went to England with Washington Allston, and became one of the London coterie of later-day famous Americans, consisting of Irving, Leslie, Newton, Allston, and Morse. He studied under Allston and at the Royal Academy, receiving a gold medal for his model of "The Dying Hercules," a subject which he also painted. After four years he returned home, painted a number of portraits, and was chiefly instrumental in founding the National Academy of Design, New York, of which he was the first president. He visited Europe again in 1829, and three years later, on his homeward voyage, suggested the idea of the electric telegraph, which a dozen years later was put into operation between Washington and Balti- more. He abandoned art as a profession in 1839, so that his portrait of Clay, which is signed and dated "S. F. B. Morse 1841," was painted when he no longer considered himself a professional artist. Morse is not entitled to very high rank as a painter, his work having interest chiefly from his subsequent distinction in another field. His best work is perhaps his whole-length portrait of Lafayette, belonging to the corporation of New York, which is simple in treatment and broadly handled in its masses. The portrait of Clay is now published for the first time.