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Timeline
Peter John Brownlee (Editor)
Description: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
Timeline
Author
Peter John Brownlee (Editor)
PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Copyright© 2014, Terra Foundation for American Art
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20707
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Timeline
COMPILED BY ALISSA SCHAPIRO
1768
The Royal Academy of Arts is founded in London by King George III.
1769–90
Joshua Reynolds, the Royal Academy’s first president, delivers his Discourses on Art at the Academy.
1772
Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III, commissions Johann Zoffany’s The Tribuna of the Uffizi, the most famous British gallery painting.
1775
The Revolutionary War between Great Britain and its American colonies begins.
1776
The Continental Congress in Philadelphia adopts the Declaration of Independence, proclaiming freedom from British rule.
1783
The Treaty of Paris ends the Revolutionary War, recognizing the United States of America as a nation independent from Great Britain.
1784
Jedidiah Morse writes Geography Made Easy, the first textbook on the subject to be published in the United States.
1786
Charles Willson Peale opens America’s first natural history museum, in Philadelphia.
1789
Jedidiah Morse publishes The American Geography, which establishes his preeminence in the field.
George Washington becomes first president of the United States.
The Constitution of the United States goes into effect.
The storming of the Bastille prison in Paris by a mob revolting against the French monarchy is one of several events that incite the French Revolution.
1790
The first federal census records more than 3.9 million inhabitants in the United States.
1791
Samuel Finley Breese Morse is born on April 27 in Charleston, Massachusetts, the eldest child of Reverend Jedidiah Morse, a Congregational minister and geographer, and Elizabeth Ann Finley Breese, granddaughter of a president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University).
French inventor Claude Chappe and his brothers develop the first version of the Chappe telegraph system, which becomes the basis for France’s nationwide semaphore system of optical telegraphy.
1793
Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin.
The Muséum Central des Arts de la République (later the Musée du Louvre) opens in Paris. Admission is free, with priority given to artists; the general public is admitted only on weekends.
1794
Charles Willson Peale and others in Philadelphia organize the Columbianum Academy, the first artists’ society in America.
1795
Jedidiah Morse publishes a children’s primer, The Elements of Geography.
1796
Hubert Robert paints Project for the Transformation of the Grande Galerie of the Louvre, one in a series of paintings depicting the real and imaginary transformation of the Musée du Louvre.
1797
John Adams becomes second president of the United States.
1799
Napoleon Bonaparte stages a coup d’état and rises to power as the First Consul of France, becoming emperor in 1804. During his time in power, he expands the collections of the Musée du Louvre (christened Musée Napoléon in 1803) with art confiscated from aristocrats and the Catholic Church, plus spoils from conquests across Europe.
1801
Thomas Jefferson becomes third president of the United States.
1802
The American Academy of the Fine Arts is founded in New York.
1803
The Louisiana Purchase doubles the size of the United States with land acquired from France and opens the continent for westward expansion.
1803–6
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, on orders from President Jefferson, explore the newly acquired territory of the Louisiana Purchase, traveling all the way to the West Coast. Native American objects collected by Lewis and Clark are installed in the “Indian Hall” at Jefferson’s home, Monticello, in 1806.
1804
Oliver Evans patents a high-pressure steam engine adapted to a variety of uses in ships and factories.
1805
Jedidiah Morse launches the Panoplist, a conservative Calvinist periodical.
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is founded in Philadelphia.
1805–10
Samuel F. B. Morse attends Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut.
1807
Robert Fulton’s Clermont, the first commercially viable steamship, sails from New York City to Albany.
Jedidiah Morse helps found the Andover Theological Seminary to reinforce Calvinist orthodoxy as part of the Protestant evangelical movement known as the Second Great Awakening.
1808–14
Alexander Wilson publishes his nine-volume American Ornithology, illustrating 268 species of North American birds, including descriptions of 26 new species.
1809
James Madison becomes fourth president of the United States.
1811
Morse sails to London with Boston artist and fellow Yale graduate Washington Allston. During his four years in England, Morse studies with the American expatriate Benjamin West, president of the Royal Academy, and exhibits Dying Hercules at the Royal Academy in 1813.
1812–15
The Anglo-American War of 1812, waged primarily between the United States and Great Britain, confirms American independence.
1815
Morse returns to the United States and opens an art studio in Boston.
Napoleon’s defeat in the Battle of Waterloo leads to his imprisonment and exile and to the restoration of Louis XVIII as king of France.
1817
James Monroe becomes fifth president of the United States.
English chemist George Field publishes Chromatics; or, an Essay on the Analogy and Harmony of Colours.
1817–18
Morse and his younger brother Sidney attempt to invent a flexible piston-pump.
1818
Morse marries Lucretia Pickering Walker, with whom he later has three children.
Mary Shelley anonymously publishes Frankenstein in London.
Aloys Senefelder, inventor of the lithographic printing process, publishes A Complete Course of Lithography Containing Clear and Explicit Instructions in German; English and French editions appear the following year.
1818–19
John Trumbull sends his painting The Declaration of Independence (1818) on a tour to New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore before it is installed in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C.
1818–21
Morse paints commissioned portraits in Charleston, South Carolina, and other major cities along the Eastern Seaboard.
1819
The Panic of 1819 initiates America’s first major financial depression.
1820
Rembrandt Peale’s painting The Court of Death is seen by over thirty thousand viewers during the first year of a successful tour to eastern and southern cities that continues through 1823.
1820–21
Morse and his former chemistry professor at Yale, Benjamin Silliman, conduct chemical and electrical experiments, including proto-photographic studies.
1821
Morse helps establish the short-lived South Carolina Academy of Fine Arts in Charleston.
Morse arrives in Washington, D.C., where he paints nearly one hundred portraits for The House of Representatives.
1822
Charles Willson Peale paints The Artist in His Museum.
1823
Morse completes The House of Representatives in January; he tours the painting to Boston, Manhattan, and several small cities in the Northeast, all with disappointing results.
Morse designs a machine for fabricating marble copies of sculptures.
President Monroe issues the Monroe Doctrine, warning European countries against further interference or colonization in the Western Hemisphere.
1824
Morse wins a one thousand dollar commission from the City of New York to paint a full-length portrait of the Marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the Revolutionary War.
James Fenimore Cooper organizes the Bread and Cheese Club, a social group of American writers, artists, and intellectuals, including Morse, which meets regularly in New York.
The National Gallery opens in London.
1825
Morse’s wife, Lucretia, dies suddenly.
John Quincy Adams becomes sixth president of the United States.
The Erie Canal opens in New York State and connects the western United States with trading centers on the Eastern Seaboard.
English physicist William Sturgeon invents the first electromagnet, a key component in the later creation of the telegraph.
1826
Morse is one of the founders of the National Academy of Design in New York and is elected its first president.
Morse delivers his four Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts at the New York Athenaeum.
James Fenimore Cooper publishes his novel The Last of the Mohicans.
1827
Morse publishes Academies of Art: A Discourse.
Morse attends a series of lectures on electricity and electromagnetism by James Freeman Dana at the New York Athenaeum.
John James Audubon publishes The Birds of America, with 435 life-size illustrations.
1829
Morse sails to London in November; he spends nearly three years painting in England, Italy, and France.
Andrew Jackson becomes seventh president of the United States.
1830
Morse visits Paris and the Louvre for the first time.
The July Revolution in France results in the abdication of Charles X and the installation of a constitutional monarchy under Louis-Philippe I.
The federal census documents over 12.8 million inhabitants, including 150,000 immigrants who arrived in the United States during the previous decade.
1831
Morse returns to Paris in September after traveling to several cities in Italy (including Rome, Florence, and Milan). He lodges with American sculptor Horatio Greenough and begins work on Gallery of the Louvre. While in Paris, Morse meets Alexander von Humboldt.
English artist John Scarlett Davis paints The Salon Carré and the Grand Galerie of the Louvre.
French artist Nicolas Sébastien Maillot paints View of the Salon Carré of the Louvre in 1831.
American scientist Joseph Henry experiments with using electromagnets to send electric signals across long distances.
A cholera epidemic strikes London, then moves to Paris the following year, where its death toll reaches 18,000; New York is infected in the summer of 1832.
1832
Morse rooms with American painter Richard West Habersham in Paris.
Morse completes most of his work on Gallery of the Louvre, and on October 6 he leaves France on the packet ship Sully. Onboard, he conceives of the electromagnetic telegraph through conversations with fellow passenger Charles Thomas Jackson. Morse, the painting, and his sketches for the telegraph arrive in New York, at the Rector Street Wharf, on November 15.
Morse accepts a position as professor of sculpture and painting at the University of the City of New-York (now New York University).
1833
Morse completes Gallery of the Louvre in August and exhibits the painting in Manhattan from early October through mid-December.
1834
Morse briefly exhibits Gallery of the Louvre in New Haven in the spring before canceling the tour due to lack of public interest. In August, Morse sells Gallery of the Louvre and its frame to George Hyde Clarke for thirteen hundred dollars.
Morse turns his studio at New York University into the laboratory where he will develop the telegraph.
1835
Morse publishes Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States and Imminent Dangers to the Free Institutions of the United States through Foreign Immigration.
French historian Alexis de Tocqueville writes Democracy in America, a report on American society.
1836
Morse runs unsuccessfully for mayor of New York on a nativist American ticket.
Ralph Waldo Emerson publishes Nature, one of the key texts of Transcendentalism, a New England-based literary and philosophical movement.
1837
Morse is passed over by Congress for a commission to paint a mural for the Capitol Rotunda. He abandons art and turns his attention to the telegraph.
Morse partners with fellow professor and scientist Leonard Gale on a telegraph that includes an electrical relay system built with a canvas stretcher; it successfully transmits a message through ten miles of wire in Dr. Gale’s classroom.
Martin Van Buren becomes eighth president of the United States.
The Panic of 1837, caused in part by the transfer of federal funds from the Bank of the United States to state banks, causes a major recession that lasts until the mid–1840s.
1838
Morse adopts a system for transmitting telegraph messages by using a numerical code for each letter of the alphabet.
Morse demonstrates his telegraph to President Van Buren and his cabinet, then sails to Europe to secure patents for it.
1838–39
The United States government forcibly relocates the Cherokee from their homelands east of the Mississippi River to a territory in present-day Oklahoma—a deadly march known as the Trail of Tears.
1839
The Académie des Sciences in Paris announces Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre’s invention of the daguerreotype photographic process on January 7.
Morse meets with Daguerre in Paris on March 7 and 8 to see some of his plates, making him possibly the first American to view a daguerreotype in person. Morse experiments with making his own daguerreotypes during the fall.
1840
Morse patents his telegraph in the United States.
Morse and scientist John William Draper open a daguerreotype portrait studio on the roof of a building overlooking Washington Square in Manhattan; Morse soon leaves Draper to establish his own studio.
1841
Morse stops making daguerreotypes.
Morse again runs unsuccessfully for mayor of New York.
William Henry Harrison becomes ninth president of the United States.
President Harrison dies suddenly, and Vice President John Tyler becomes tenth president.
P. T. Barnum takes over John Scudder’s American Museum in New York.
1842
The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art is founded in Hartford, Connecticut.
1843
Nearly one thousand people from Missouri convene a wagon train, dubbed “The Great Migration of 1843,” to journey two thousand miles to Oregon Country.
1844
Morse’s first intercity telegraph message—“What hath God wrought?”—is sent between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore.
The American Art-Union—a subscription-based organization for the exhibition of paintings and the distribution of paintings, prints, and medals to its members—is founded in New York.
1845
Morse resigns as president of the National Academy of Design.
James K. Polk becomes eleventh president of the United States.
Alexander von Humboldt publishes the first volume of Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe, his multivolume treatise on geography and the natural sciences.
John L. O’Sullivan coins the term “Manifest Destiny” in an article advocating the annexation of the Republic of Texas as part of America’s divine right to settle the West.
1846
The United States Congress refuses a petition by American artists to award Morse the last available painting commission in the Capitol Rotunda.
Elias Howe invents the sewing machine.
1846–48
The Mexican-American War ends with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, giving the United States more than five hundred thousand square miles of Mexican territory, from the Rio Grande to the Pacific Ocean.
1847
Morse buys Locust Grove, an estate on the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Richard M. Hoe patents the cylindrical rotary printing press, which exponentially increases the production and circulation of newspapers and periodicals.
1848
Morse marries Sarah Elizabeth Griswold, with whom he later has six children.
The Seneca Falls Convention assembles in New York to discuss the rights of women in America.
1849
Zachary Taylor becomes twelfth president of the United States.
The California Gold Rush spurs over eighty thousand Americans and immigrants to venture west in search of gold.
1850
President Taylor dies in office, and Vice President Millard Fillmore becomes thirteenth president of the United States.
1853
Franklin Pierce becomes fourteenth president of the United States.
1854
Morse runs unsuccessfully for Congress as a Democrat.
Morse’s patent for the telegraph is upheld by the United States Supreme Court.
The British and French governments construct telegraph lines to use during the Crimean War.
1857
James Buchanan becomes fifteenth president of the United States.
1857–58
Morse partners with Cyrus W. Field in an attempt to lay a transatlantic telegraph cable.
1858
Queen Victoria sends the first transatlantic cable message to President Buchanan.
1859
Oliver Wendell Holmes publishes his essay “The Stereoscope and the Stereograph.”
1861
Abraham Lincoln becomes sixteenth president of the United States.
1861–65
The American Civil War is waged; both Union and Confederate forces use the telegraph to communicate with troops and political officials.
1863
President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, establishing the freedom of slaves in the ten southern states that had seceded from the Union. In November, Lincoln delivers his Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
1865
Morse becomes one of the first trustees of Vassar College, located near his estate in Poughkeepsie, New York.
President Lincoln is assassinated, and Vice President Andrew Johnson becomes seventeenth president of the United States.
The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution outlaws slavery throughout the country.
1866
Morse sails to France with his family to serve as honorary commissioner to the Universal Exposition of 1867.
1869
Ulysses S. Grant becomes eighteenth president of the United States.
The first transcontinental railroad is completed.
1870
The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens in New York.
1871
Morse transmits an international “farewell” telegraph message from New York around the world.
1872
Morse dies in Manhattan on April 2.
1884
Gallery of the Louvre is loaned to and then purchased by Syracuse University in New York, where it hangs in the studio arts department, fulfilling Morse’s desire that the painting serve to instruct American artists.
1982
Chicago businessman and art collector Daniel J. Terra purchases Gallery of the Louvre and sends the painting on its first national tour.