Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [15]
The judges at the Royal Academy agreed. They rejected six hundred pictures submitted for the exhibition but accepted Finley’s Hercules, to be displayed with canvases by West, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Turner, and John Constable. Even in this distinguished company the painting made an impression. The London Globe commented that several unheralded artists had shown works of “very high merit,” ranking Finley and one other painter at “the head of this class.” The exhibition won him more than a blurb. The Adelphi Society of Arts awarded his statue its gold medal for the best piece of sculpture. The prize was presented to him by the Duke of Norfolk before a large assembly that included the ambassadors of Turkey, Sardinia, and Russia.
Finley’s parents had long and repeatedly asked him to send evidence of his progress. “We have not seen any of your handy work except the picture in India ink of yourself,” Elizabeth complained, “which we did not think a good likeness.” But Finley now had something to show. He sent home a flattering press clipping about his painting, a plaster cast of his sculpture, and his gold medal from the Adelphi Society. With Americans eager to be appreciated abroad, news of his success spread quickly. He was nominated for membership in the American Antiquarian Society; President Dwight of Yale delighted in his “proficiency”; the Philadelphia Port-Folio, a literary journal, linked him with Allston as successors to West and Copley. Lest Finley’s growing reputation puff him up, Elizabeth sent some deflating advice: “observe a modesty in the reception of premiums and praises on account of your talents, that will show to those who bestow them that you are worthy of them in more senses than merely as an artist.”
Samuel F. B. Morse, Dying Hercules (Yale University Art Gallery)
Hoping to earn money by his art, Finley made two extended trips to Bristol. Many opulent merchants lived in the city, and altogether he spent some eight months there. Little more is known of his first stay than that he thought the place pleasant and got some profitable commissions for portraits. But his second stay was both unprofitable and unpleasant. Almost no one called to look at his pictures, much less order a portrait. Allston was there part of the time, but did little better. Holding one of England’s first one-man shows of works by a living artist, he sold a single picture—to his uncle, the American consul.
Finley decided that businessmen were brutes—“grovelling, avaricious devotees of mammon, whose souls are narrowed to the studious contemplation of a hard-earned shilling.” One Bristol patron, a man worth a hundred thousand pounds, ordered three paintings from him and then declined to take them. He gave no other reason than that he had enough pictures already. Finley regretted that he had catered to such “miserly beings” until it almost seemed to him no longer repugnant to treat his noble art as a mere trade: “Fie! on myself, I am ashamed of myself.”
Finley drew a second conclusion from the merchants’ treatment of him. They were in no mood to encourage an American artist, being absorbed in “the conquest of the United States.” He had arrived in Bristol for his second stay just as extraordinary dispatches from America reached England: British troops had invaded the city of Washington, torched the Treasury Building and Navy Yard, burned President Madison’s furniture in his parlor, and set fire to the Capitol.
Outraged, Finley looked for guidance to the hero he had been taught to emulate: “Oh! for the genius of Washington. Had I but his talents with what alacrity would I return to the relief of that country which … is dearer to me than