A New Look: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre
The Terra Foundation’s monumental painting, Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre 1831–33, has recently undergone an extensive conservation treatment in the studio of Lance Mayer and Gay Myers, specialists in nineteenth-century American painting who are responsible for recent treatments of major works including Emmanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware (Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Rembrandt Peale’s The Court of Death (Detroit Institute of Arts). Conservation analysis and related research has revealed that the technical construction of Morse’s painting was no less complex than its composition. Read More >
X-Ray of John La Farge’s Paradise Valley, 1866–68
Not long after moving his family to the village of Paradise, near Newport, Rhode Island, in 1865, and during his recovery from a “serious illness” believed by the artist to have been lead poisoning, John La Farge began his two years’ work on the painting that would become known as Paradise Valley. Not exhibited until 1876, it garnered much praise and elicited an intriguing string of comments regarding its sophisticated yet subtle treatment of color, atmosphere, and effect. Read More >
Observation, Imagination and Technique in Fitz Henry Lane’s Dream Painting, 1862
In the fall of 1862, painter Fitz Henry Lane had a dream in which he saw a painting of a wrecked ship hung in the well-furnished room where he slept. Immediately, he set about creating the image that eventually came to be known as Dream Painting. Lane, or someone after him, appended to the back of the canvas a letter written by the artist narrating the process by which he came to paint the picture. Learn more about the origins of this artwork here. Read More >