By Matthew Ehret
In the last installment of this new series exploring the role of culture wars and a forgotten battle to establish an American renaissance movement in the arts during the decades following the War of Independence, I introduced a network of scientific and artistic geniuses on both sides of the Atlantic whose ideas and discoveries were profoundly shaped by the figure of Benjamin Franklin.
One of those figures was an inventor by the name of Samuel F.B. Morse (1791-1872), whose telegraph revolutionized the power of human communication merging electrical power with human language.
However, Morse was first and foremost an artist and patriot, whose early career saw him rise to the heights of artistic excellence, and during which time he also oversaw a major battle that took place between two opposing cultural movements in the young USA.
As we will soon see, one of those movements was led by the Anglophile enemies of the republic who were committed to promoting an effete and decadent style of aesthetics designed to reduce the powers of moral cognition. The other healthier movement was led by Samuel Morse.
Morse’s Insight into Cultural Warfare and the Dream of 1776
In 1833, Morse stated:
“There is doubtless danger, but I believe in the possibility, by the diffusion of the highest moral and intellectual cultivation through every class, of raising the lower classes in refinement.”
What he’s getting at is an understanding that has typically animated the thinking of the greatest scientists, inventors, who had a very different notion of what science was from the definitions prevalent in our current society.
But when America was founded, when the United States was founded as an independent republic, it was built around the idea that there would no longer be two classes or castes of those hereditary elites that were born into classes of privilege.
The idea was that we would no longer have two sets of rules, one set of operating procedures for the self-professed elite along with their own separate elite culture separated from the filthy masses.
The elite had formerly kept control over humanity by preserving their own separate elite music, elite literature, their own separate elite paintings that they would enjoy while the masses had
their own separate slave culture and slave ethic that would apply only to them.
That idea of the two cultures was no longer acceptable with the new concept that everybody was sovereign.
It wasn’t that there was one sovereign lording over the masses and dispensing rights from above, but as of 1776, it was understood by all Americans that sovereignty itself was an unalienable aspect of every human that was part of your nation, and that every human being had inalienable rights because of that. And there was a certain faith in a sense that we all had access to self-improvement, our conscience, our ability, our power to use our reason and mature our reason to harmonize and mature our identities as active participants in a republic.
And that was what Benjamin Franklin said to the lady in that apocryphal story. What have you given us after the Constitution was established? And he said a republic if you can keep it. So it’s all that clause, the conditionality, is that it’s not a successful formula forever.
It always requires the reliving of the best ideas that gave birth to the revolutionary spark and that real appreciation for the values where people were willing to sacrifice their lives from 1776 to 1783 for the sake of Ideas.
That’s not something that you could ever take for granted, which is why it’s a republic “if you can keep it”.
The Genius of Samuel Finley Breeze Morse
So here is where Samuel Morris the inventor, unites with Samuel Morse the painter.
Despite the fact that most people know him as an inventor and a scientist very few realize that his actual first 20 years of his adult life were primarily devoted to the cause of painting and those institutions that he created not only in the sciences but also the institutions in the realm of painting and photography endured far beyond his life.
From 1827-1828 Morse toured the USA delivering a lecture series justifying a new idea of painting that was more in alignment with the ideals of the US Declaration of Independence and Constitution that had just recently been created. And he says here:
“It becomes a question of some importance whether it be not possible to lay the foundations of a just taste in the Fine Arts in our country on such principles that a substantial fabric may rise in as beautiful proportions as the temple of our political constitution. That the foundation may be strong it should be laid not in authority however ancient, but in the never changing principles of nature. “Authority in all its forms usurps the place of truth and reason.” [1]
Keep in mind, that while Morse said these words, the United States it was a very new country.
The question in the mind of Morse and other republican artists in these early days was: How do you create a new school of the arts befitting of a society that really values and cherishes freedom and that doesn’t have oligarchical structures governing it?
Here is a painting that Samuel Morse did of the Niagara Falls
It features a few people in the scenery that you would almost miss. There are a few natives just going about their business. I think you have a couple of Westerners in there too.
I am not sure if there is a bigger message embedded in this one, but I’m just showing it here, to get across that this is a man who had incredible talent.
Let’s look at a couple of other early paintings by Morse before he made the shift and became one of America’s leading scientists. Here is an 1822 painting of America’s early house of representatives.
Let’s just look at one more Morse 1830 painting of the Chapel of the Virgin at Subiaco depicting a moment of religious reverence in the country side of Italy.
Let’s return to Morse’s foundational question during his lecture tour of the USA: How could a foundation of a new school of painting specifically expressive of the new American paradigm come into being?
How could a new ethic be shaped by and in turn shape, a higher set of aesthetical principles that don’t rely upon simply authority as a substitute of truth and reason, or simply copy the European painting traditions creating nothing new in turn?
That was a big problem. How do you do it? Because it really wasn’t happening. Or at least it was happening at a very slow pace.
Even though the republic had been around for almost fifty years, there really wasn’t a strong aesthetic tradition, neither in music, painting or architecture at this time.
So that was on a lot of peoples’ minds.
Because when you give yourself to the admiration of something, it was known since the days of Plato, and Pythagoras, that we become more like those things which are objects of admiration. That is to say, Plato’s principle of ‘Like attracts Like’ expresses itself as we awaken that within our own souls the characteristics of that which we admire… for good or for bad.
If you admire things that are ugly, then obviously ugliness will awaken inside of you. When that happens, you then become a little bit more like that, those archetypes, and you shouldn’t be surprised if your ability to judge beautiful vs ugly ideas is reduced.
Inversely, when you admire something which is truly Beautiful, then you awaken something beautiful within you as well.
So this is not some type of secret elite knowledge, or some idle speculation.
This is something that has been known by empires for a very long time, which is why empires rely on certain aesthetical, ugly principles or principles that don’t make us better people, but rather tend to stagnate our potential instead of enhancing and activating that potential.
There are two artistic paradigms at this time in 1808 as Morse is beginning his life as a painter and revolutionary which we will explore.
The earliest foundations of something we could call ‘an American school of painting’ at this time was largely being shaped by an institution called the American Academy of Fine Arts. And the American Academy of Fine Arts was set up by the revolutionary war painter, John Trumbull and a grouping of his co-thinkers, and as we will come to see, this network of painters and financiers behind Trumbull’s Academy did not have the best interests of Americans or the American dream at heart.
Livingstone, Burr and America’s Deep State
One of the primary sponsors of Trumbull and this new academy was a very powerful figure by the name of Robert Livingston (1742-1813), who essentially became the dominant force behind the Federalist Party once Alexander Hamilton was removed from the picture in 1804.
Livingston had served as the first Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the USA from 1781-1783, and US ambassador to France during Thomas Jefferson’s first term acting as a leader of the Federalist Party. Although celebrated as a patriot, Livingston had also taken part in at least three attempts to destroy the young republic between 1800, 1804 and 1807 led by the figure of former vice-President Aaron Burr[2], who simultaneously had established a financial control grid within the USA as a branch of the City of London within America dubbed ‘Wall Street’ in 1799.
This was a very pro-British, Anglophile movement of aristocrats that formed the basis of America’s deep state, and typically worked in opposition to the party of the Slaveocracy of southern states then called ‘The Democratic Party’ led by Thomas Jefferson.
In reality, as I outlined in my book The Clash of the Two Americas: The Unfinished Symphony, both parties played out a controlled gang-counter-gang operation, as both sides shared common anti-constitutional views, denied the concept that “All Men Are Created Equal”, and both sides were used by British intelligence to undermine the better interests of the young nation.
Yet another clue to that story includes the fact that Robert Livingston was himself one of the leading assistants to the traitor General Benedict Arnold, who as we know, betrayed the revolution and defected to the side of the British Empire in 1778.
Robert Livingston took a very keen interest in the arts.
And by asking the question: ‘Why weren’t the arts developing in the new country? Why wasn’t this new revolutionary school of aesthetics developing during this period? We must look at this group for an answer.
John Trumbull was unarguably a very good artist (his iconic painting celebrating the declaration of Independence is featured below). So he was admittedly, a very talented artist, but it must be said that he was the only artist who was part of this founding group in New York.
Other members of this sect included James Pinchot, Thomas Clark, Ogden Haggerty, who were leading speculators and political intelligence operatives among the Federalists who were all implicated in this anti-American conspiracy led by Burr to dissolve the union.[3]
What they wanted to do was essentially monetize the arts and stifle the promethean spirit that gave rise to the revolution itself.
They didn’t really care about art itself, but enjoyed using the field for money laundering purposes (just like today), speculation, entertainment and commercialism. This is why an important battle broke out during this period over what philosophy would shape the arts.
The only types of arts that these financier patrons worked to build a market around was in portraiture since that was the biggest money-making field of painting in the days before photography. Thus, if you wanted to be an artist in America and if you also want to make ends meet, you had to be pretty much a portrait painter.
Portraiture is beautiful, but the problem is that it is a very limited mode of expression.
You can do a lot of beautiful things with a portrait, but the power of expressing higher creativity is very limited.
Those few powerful patrons of the American art scene outlined above worked hard to ensure that people had to conform as painters to that aesthetic. Some freedom to venture out of portraiture into the banality of a landscape of a field or something that didn’t really contain ideas was also permitted. But other than that, you don’t see a lot of inspiring paintings during this time reflecting anything even closely as innovative and inspired as the works of great European masters such as Leonardo DaVinci, Raphael Sanzio, Rembrandt van Rijn, Vermeer, etc.
In opposition to this cynical power structure, we can find a healthier movement preparing a resistance. One of the key figures among this group can be found the figure of William Dunlop (1766-1839).
Dunlop was a famous painter, playwright, actor and historian of the arts in the early USA. In 1783, at the age of 17, Dunlop painted a portrait of George Washington [see below] who sponsored the young man’s journey to England where he studied under the great American painter Benjamin West before returning to the USA to launch a new movement in theater, and design.
Of his historical books, Dunlop is most famous for a three volume set called The History on the Rise of Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States published in 1834. He was a co-founder and Vice President of the National Academy of the Arts of Design that was set up in New York by Samuel Morse who served as President from its founding until 1845.
Towards a British Imperial or Republican Artistic Model?
Dunlop and Morse lost no time launching a direct war with the anglophile dictatorship of Trumbull’s Academy of Fine Arts describing this insidious agency in the following terms:
“The Academy of fine arts was a ‘joint stock company,’ composed of persons of every trade and profession, who thought the privilege of visiting the exhibition an equivalent for twenty fine dollars – such persons were the electors of the directors, and entitled to be themselves elected directors. Artists could only share those privileges by purchasing stocks, and might be controlled in everything respecting their profession by those who were ignorant of the arts.”[4]
That’s just a quick overview. So what happened? This is this is extraordinarily interesting because when when Morse and Dunlop create their new organization, they began attracting a lot of talent. Many students were attracted to the new academy had felt extremely stifled in the in the former organization in New York and began flocking to the new Academy of Arts and Design.
These young painters wanted freedom of expression. They wanted to be able to actually earn a living while also showcasing their artwork and deeper creativity, which was not happening in the older organization. Artists wanted a school where they could also teach the next generation and transmit their skills.
This is why so many of the brightest artists immediately joined Morse’s new Academy of the Arts of Design. We find that at its inception, there were thirty of America’s best talent, including Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Frederick Agate, Martin E. Thompson and many others.
Now, there was a battle back and forth between these two organizations for quite some time. And originally there was an attempt at a compromise where John Trumbull and Robert Livingston’s organization tried to say “okay well we’ll let you in on the action. We’ll give the artists a chance to be on the boards of directors… They just have to put in $100 and we’ll let them in.”
But then when the time came to actually follow through on the promise, Trumbull said: On second thought, we’ll only let two artists onto the Board. We don’t want to sully it with too many. We want experts still running the show.
And they blocked all of the other young painters from having a deciding role to play in anything.
So at that point, Morse and Dunlop basically said, “forget about it”.
And a series of public debates ensued, which are extraordinary debates just to see the paradigms of the arts clashing of the British vs the American paradigms.
John Trumbull, in his public oration against Samuel Morse stated:
“It appears to me that the Academy of Design requires the abolition of the stockholders of this academy, as the basis of the negotiation, the sine qua non, on their part of a union. You will permit me to state at large the reasons why I regard this basis as utterly inadmissible. “It has been proved by all experience, and indeed, it is a truism, that the arts cannot flourish without patronage in some form; it is manifest that artists cannot interchangeably purchase the works of each other and prosper; they are necessarily dependent upon the protection of the rich and the great. In this country there is no sovereign who can establish and endow academies, as Louis XIV did in Paris, and in Rome; or as the late George III, did in London; and in case of want of success in their early efforts, to aid them, as the later monarch did aid the Academy of London, by a gift from the privy purse, to the amount of £5,000”
In case you missed it, Trumbull is basically saying “we must cater to the wealthy… You can’t get by without wealthy patrons.” Trumbull is of course referring to the wealthy Wall Street stock jobbers who were, again, just using the arts for speculation and other shady dealings.
In response to this message, Samuel F. B. Morse response by saying:
“All this is as true of authors as of artists; now let me ask of any author, what kind of patronage he seeks from the rich and from the great? What sort of dependence he has on them for protection in this country, since there is no sovereign to whom he can look for protection, no aristocracy on which he can depend for patronage. Is there a man of independent feelings, of whatever profession he may be, who does not feel disgust at language like this? And is it to be supposed that the artists of the country are so behind the sentiments of their countrymen, as not to spurn any patronage or protection that takes such a shape as this? The artist, poor helpless thing, must learn to bow and bow in the halls and antechambers of my Lord, implore his lordship’s protection; advertise himself painter to his majesty or his royal highness, boast over his fellows, because he has his grace for his patron, and think himself well off, if he may be permitted to come in at the back door of his patron’s gallery. “If there are artists who desire to be so protected and so dependent, it is a free country, and there is room for all; every man to his taste; – but artists of the National Academy (of Design) have some sense of character to be deadened, some pride of profession to be humbled, some aspiring after excellence in art to be brought down, some of the independent spirit of their country to lose, before they can be bent to the purpose of such an anti-republican institution (as the Academy of Fine Arts). In making these remarks on the language and sentiments of the address (by Trumbull), I disclaim identifying them with those of the stockholders of the American Academy (of Fine Arts). I know not that there are any who have imbibed such degrading notions of the arts, or such contemptuous opinions of artists; if there are, we wish them to rally round just such a tree as the sentiments of the address would nurture. We believe that our climate is uncongenial to the growth of such an aristocratic plant; and that the public will not be long in deciding whether such an institution, or the National Academy (of Design), is most in harmony with the independent character of the country.” [5]
To make a long story short, Morse won the debate. He eviscerated his British loyalist opponents and the tide of popular opinion was turned against Trumbull’s machine.
In his Samuel F.B. Morse, The Leonardo DaVinci of America, Pierre Beaudry writes:
“On that note, Trumbull was forced to resign by popular consent. Thus, Morse had raised the fundamental question of principle and his flanking maneuver was right on target. He identified the true question that Schiller had raised in his lessons on Universal History, that is, the difference between “studies for bread” and “studies for truth.” What gave the right to vote in the Academy of Fine Arts was the share in stocks; but what gave the right to vote in the National Academy of Design was the share in principles. This is how the difference between the British system and the American system was established at the National Academy of Design. After the debate, it became clear that the two institutions could never be united because the American system and the British system were based on two irreconcilable principles, that of fair trade and that of free trade. However, the public meeting was not even closed when the British sore losers were already preparing for their revenge. As a commentator of the period put it: “Laocoon’s agony was doubled, and Apollo, scowling, seemed to exclaim: ‘Mr. Morse! Mr. Morse! I’ll make you sweat for this!’ But Trumbull and his statues writhed in vain.” [6]
Within a matter of months, Trumbull and Livingston’s British Arts Academy quite literally disintegrated.
Nobody wanted to be a part of it. And in the wake of this victory, the new Academy of Design became an engine for a completely new school of arts that had never been seen before.
I just want to show a few examples of the sort of school of painting dubbed ‘The Hudson River School’ that arose out of this new healthy movement led by Morse.
A New School of Painting emerges
This is an Albert Bierstadt painting dubbed ‘Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California’…
This is more than a simple landscape and more than the sum of its parts. It’s difficult to express in words, but Bierstadt was very conscious of expressing the Divine in the light and grandeur of his immense landscapes. The focus was never to simply paint literally, but to penetrate to the essence of the soul of Creation using light, shade, perspective and every other tool available.
This next image is from Thomas Cole which is one of the segments of a series of paintings called ‘On the Course of Life’.
Thomas Cole, a direct student of Benjamin West and collaborator of Morse, mastered the copying of nature in high fidelity, but he rarely did a landscape without conveying a higher idea that transcended the literal limits of natural scenes. In this instance, we see the journey of a man from infancy through the wonders and lessons and turmoil of adolescence, adulthood, maturity and ultimately death. Cole was not doing this out of a romantic impulse, but rather to bring into the minds of his audience the profound truths of our own mortality and the deeper reflections of the purpose of life.
Here is another painting by Hudson River School painter Frederick Edwin Church called Cotopaxi.
Just like the first two, Cotopaxi is more than just a landscape.
You see, just by simply contrasting two different qualities of heat and light, one from the sun, one from this very destructive force of nature… the volcano, you can definitely express a variety of universal sentiments. These are a category of sentiments which transcend the ephemeral emotions that we just experience in day to day mundane events such as the sentiment that “I want coffee”, “I’m so disappointed that my show is a repeat” or whatever else you can imagine.
Those forms of emotion are very different from the universal sentiments that people like Friedrich Schiller or Alexander von Humboldt explore in their theories of art and freedom, which is always the focus of the Hudson River School paintings.
So, what is the universal sentiment being expressed by Frederick Church in this painting contrasting the destructive power of the volcano with the light of the sun rising on the horizon? I would say it is hope. The higher power of the rising sun will always supercede the temporal destructions and fears that emerge on the earth. The fact that this painting was composed in 1862… at the heart of the American Civil War should not be ignored when evaluating Church’s intention.
This whole school arose directly out of Samuel Morse’s academy and the earlier school led by Morse’s teacher, Benjamin West.
Let’s take some time to dive more deeply into the story of Samuel Finley Breeze Morse, in order to develop a greater appreciation for how he really went about throwing down the gauntlet and showcasing what this new school could do, and how it could inspire higher moral ideals and talent and in the population.
Footnotes
[1] Samuel F. B. Morse, Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts
[2] When this Academy of Fine Arts was created. Aaron Burr had only recently departed for London, where he stayed for five years in the house of Jeremy Bentham, because he was caught at the heart of a conspiracy to break up the United States by declaring himself sort of the tyrant king of the Western, a new Western front that would then go in and take over control of the White House. and declare an alliance integrating the free states that didn’t have slavery with British Canada and have a new sort of confederacy run by sort of him as a king. And this all came out in testimonies. Insiders blew the whistle before the plan could really go ahead. And several other plans, incarnations of this plan had already been attempted and failed. largely due to the interventions by Alexander Hamilton in 1804, in 1800, and 1797. Gerald Therrien’s Canadian History Unveiled Volume 4 documents this story in detail.
[3] See Appendix 3 (The 1804 Northern Secession Plot and the Founding Fathers of the Deep State) for more on this forgotten piece of universal history
[4] William Dunlop, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of design in the United States, Boston, C. E. Goodspeed & Co., 1918, Vol. III, p. 53
[5] William Dunlop, Op. Cit., p. 130
[6] Beaudry, Pierre, Samuel F.B. Morse, The Leonardo DaVinci of America and Carleton Mabee, The American Leonardo, A Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1943 Op. Cit., p. 108
For more work on Classical painting and the fight for republican principles across the ages, pick up a copy of ‘The Art of Liberty’ which I just released with Cynthia Chung in time for Christmas.
Additionally, many of the insights showcased in this essay series were made possible through the pioneering work of Pierre Beaudry whose American painting book is freely available for all to download here
Matt is the editor-in-chief of The Canadian Patriot Review, Senior Fellow of the American University in Moscow and Director of the Rising Tide Foundation. He has written the four volume Untold History of Canada series, four volume Clash of the Two Americas series, the Revenge of the Mystery Cult Trilogy and Science Unshackled: Restoring Causality to a World in Chaos. He is also co-host of the weekly Breaking History on Badlands Media where this article was first posted and host of Pluralia Dialogos (which airs every second Sunday at 11am ET here).