Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [31]
He saw encouraging signs of how his efforts might be received. During his stay in Washington, the painting had become a town topic. After he left, notices of its progress appeared in several newspapers, anticipating how it would finally look and praising “the assiduous labour and distinguished talents of the artist.” As he worked on through the fall, he moved the estimated completion date forward to January. But by the new year he was at last done, having toiled over the canvas some fourteen months.
Samuel F. B. Morse, The House of Representatives (Corcoran Gallery of Art)
The House of Representatives shows a silhouetted figure lighting the thirty Argand oil lamps of the great three-tiered chandelier. Members of the House face the viewer as they stand around the glowing hall singly or in small groups, preparing to assemble. Finley intended not so much to portray the congressmen, however, as to show the American public its seat of government, to make “a faithful representation of the national hall, with its furniture and business during the session of Congress.” In doing so, he convincingly depicted the tricky-to-render half-dome and sloping concentric circles of seats, and minutely reproduced the chamber’s yellow curtain fringes, wall clock, inkstands, letterbox, and distant firelit lobby.
Regarded as a history painting, The House of Representatives lacks the memorable narrative content of such predecessors, and likely influences, as Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence or Copley’s Death of Lord Chatham. But it offers something as novel in its way as West’s Death of Wolfe—a history painting without history. Finley discovered a material symbol for his sense of America’s growing might and the superiority of its institutions, for the cultural nationalism that in London had animated his fierce denunciations of British policy. The somberly lit cavernous chamber and its twenty-two monumental columns, dwarfing the legislators who prepare to work into the night, dramatize the young republic’s seriousness, stability, and unostentatious grandeur.
Connecting the present with the foundational principles of the Constitution, the justices of the Court stand on a raised platform to the left. On the wall behind them, in a massive bronze-colored frame surmounted by an eagle, hangs a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Connecting the country’s destiny, too, with the Morse family, in the scarlet-draped gallery overlooking the legislative throng stands Jedediah Morse. Returned from his expedition to the Great Lakes as an Indian commissioner, he peers down upon the scene, near the Pawnee chief Petalasharo.
After displaying The House of Representatives briefly in New Haven, Finley sent it to Boston for exhibition in February, going along to help unpack the 640-pound canvas. Even Allston’s critical eye admired the perspective, the well-drawn figures naturally disposed, especially the exquisitely colored architecture—“really a very beautiful thing…. he has brought out more in this picture than I ever anticipated.” Were it shown in London, he said, Finley would be made an associate at the Royal Academy. Still, he suggested some small improvements, which Finley made, delaying the opening for two days.
The Boston exhibition took in some $40 the first day, including the sale of printed keys that identified each of the eighty-six figures. Admission was twenty-five cents, but Finley also sold thirty-five or so season’s tickets, for fifty cents. “Things look well,” he wrote to Lucrece, “every thing indicates success.” Having launched the show, he went back to New Haven and gave over its management to Henry Pratt, a young artist just out of his teens who had assisted him in Charleston and Washington.
In the changeable March weather, alternately cold and warm, Pratt averaged only about $3 a day. As receipts fell, he hired a man to distribute five