Still Life
Artist
Eleanor Ecob Morse
(American, 1837 - 1921)
Date1890
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsFramed: 20 × 27 × 3in. (50.8 × 68.6 × 7.6cm)
Overall: 10 × 17in. (25.4 × 43.2cm)
Overall: 10 × 17in. (25.4 × 43.2cm)
ClassificationsPAINTINGS
Credit LineGift of Mrs. Janet Bowers Bothwell
Terms
Object number85.1
Description On View
On viewCollections
CopyrightNo known copyright restrictions.
Label TextEleanor Ecob Morse was distantly related, by marriage, to the artist and inventor Samuel F. B. Morse (1791-1872). She and her husband, the landscape painter and itinerant minister Jonathan Bradley Morse (1834-98), lived in the Utica area during the second half of the nineteenth
century. 'The History of Oneida County' has noted about Eleanor that “nature and religion were her twin teachers. . . . through all her busy life she managed to get some time each day to devote to art, and after a time found herself at the head of enthusiastic art classes.”
Eleanor’s skills as an artist combined with her moral standing as a minister’s wife made her eminently qualified to provide art lessons for Rachel (1850-1915) and Maria Williams (1852-1935), whose parents built Fountain Elms. In 1876 the twenty-four year old Maria noted in her diary: “I go once a week to Whitesboro to take drawing lessons of a Mrs. Morse. . . . I think I shall like to draw very much, and perhaps I shall try to paint by and Bye [sic]. [Rachel] paints flowers from nature. . . . We think she does very well.”
Paul D. Schweizer
