This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Part of the Pennsylvania School, impressionists who painted in
Bucks County, Pennsylvania and who were regarded as the leading
landscape school in the early part of the 20th century, Morgan Colt had
joined the group in 1912. Along with Edward Redfield, Daniel
Garber, Robert Spencer, Charles Rosen, William Lathrop and Rae Sloan
Bredin, they eschewed modernism and exhibited together, calling
themselves the New Hope Group.
However Colt was better known for crafts than for painting, but he did
exhibit paintings with the New Hope Group in 1916 and 1917 at the
Cincinnati Art Museum, Detroit Art Institute, Corcoran Gallery, the
Carnegie Institute and the Arlington Gallery in New York
City. By 1929, many of these artists plus others exhibited
together, calling themselves the New Hope Art Colony, but Colt died
before their first exhibition, which was in May 1929.
Colt's background was architecture, which he had studied at Columbia
University. Of him it was said that among the Pennsylvania
School, he made more of a contribution as a craftsman than as a
painter. He was born in Summit, New Jersey. In 1912, he
built a houseboat, the Deewaydin, which he originally intended
for him and his wife to inhabit on the Delaware Canal at New Hope, but
they found it unmanageable. They lived in a house and later
purchased the studio of William Lathrop, which Colt transformed it into
a distinguished Tudor residence. In 1919, he added more buildings
and the establishment became known as the Gothic Shops. There he
exhibited furniture and metalwork, something for which he was
particularly noted and for which he is associated with the Arts and
Crafts Movement in America in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. His specialty was metal graden furniture and fire
screens with emphasis on hand-wrought iron.
Because Colt was more of a craftsman thatn a painter, he has not
received much attention in the art books. One of the best sources
of information about his work is an article by Jesse Martin Breese,
published in Country Life Magazine, February 1926, and titled
"Morgan Colt: Craftsman Extraordinary". However, he did paintings
that got positive attention including Canal Boat, ca
1915-1925. Depicting a barge man navigating his boat on the
Delaware Canal, it is described as "the most impressive work by this
artist that has come to light. This is the only work known by the
artist to display a substantial use of flecked and broken brushwork,
typical of Impressionism." (Folk 96)
After Colt's death in 1926, the new owner of the Colt property
destroyed many of his paintings, thinking them without value. So
it is difficult many years later to assess them or to know the breadth
of his subject matter.
Source:
Thomas C. Folk, The Pennsylvania Impressionists
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Morgan Colt is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
San Francisco Panama-Pacific Exhibition 1915
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