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Ad Code: 4
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from Auction House Records.
Still life with basket of cherries
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  The following, submitted December 2004, is from Penny Harter, the great-great-grandaughter of Eleanor Ecob Morse and Jonathan Bradley Morse, both of whom were artists. Harter's source is a journal kept by Eleanor Ecob Morse from January through September, 1890, when Eleanor was in her early fifties, as well as information that came down in the family. Ms. Harter offers the following:
"I do have a journal of Eleanor Ecob Morse's, and it runs from January through September in the year 1890 when she was in her early fifties. My mother remembered seeing great stacks of these journals in the attic of her grandmother's home at Staten Island, New York. That was the home of Eleanor's daughter, Florence Morse Kingsley, who was married to the Reverend Charles Rawson Kingsley, after whom the street they lived on was named."
"Eleanor went to live there after Jonathan (whom she calls 'Bradly" in the journal) died. Mother, as a very young woman, dared to take what I remember (when I was in high school) as being two volumes, but somehow I have only one now. One of my dreams is to track down the other volumes if they still exist."
"Of course, in the journal she refers often to her painting, as well as to her other endeavors: writing fiction, being a minister's wife, teaching Bible school, teaching private students to paint, family matters, the weather, dealing with a flu epidemic, hearing the first phonograph, etc. It's a gold mine of info, a time capsule beautifully written!. And she refers often to her husband Jonathan Bradley Morse and his work".
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The following is from James McIlhinney' who interviewed Penny Harter.
Jonathan Bradley Morse was an artist and itinerant minister, generally on a fill-in basis. He and his wife, Eleanor, resided at One Clark Place in Utica, New York. They both painted a great deal. According to the journal and family-held paintings, they both worked in oils and watercolors. Eleanor favored painting flowers, especially lilacs, and various fruits in copper and pewter bowls, but also refers in her journal to painting chickens with strawberries and flowers on fine china, both for her family and on commission. Jonathan loved painting landscapes and seascapes. In the journal, Eleanor often refers to the subject matter of paintings "Bradly" is working on as well as to her own ongoing work.
They both painted on canvas and sometimes painted on a kind of early masonite, or on paper glued to masonite. Perhaps they were experimenting with new materials.
The couple spent a month many summers on Cape Ann, Gloucester, Massachusetts, where they stayed in East Gloucester at an inn referred to in the diary as "The Delphine." Ms. Harter's mother (Barbara Kingsley Harter, their great-granddaughter), when in her twenties (over sixty years ago), remembered visiting an inn on Cape Ann and seeing the lobby walls covered with Morse paintings. Perhaps it was The Delphine. In the diary, there is also a reference to an 'Amnesty's Art Store' in Syracuse, New York, where they both displayed and sold some of their paintings. Eleanor remarked that a woman offered $150 for one of her lilac paintings, but she refused because she'd been offered $300 for it several times. The couple did reasonably well for the times, depending a great deal on selling their work to survive economically.
Eleanor mentions several paintings by name: "German Girl", "American Beauty Rose" which depicted roses in a brass vase, and "Boiled Lobster" which depicted a lobster and pot and spices ready for cooking. She complains that the odor of lavender oil sickens her. Eleanor usually painted still lifes, though she did the occasional landscape. She speaks of one large watercolor with an orchard in blossom and cows in the foreground. It frustrated her until she "got it right." She also wrote of taking watercolor classes with a Rhoda Nicholls.
Penny Harter and her sister have a few of Eleanor's paintings, still lifes, and some flower studies on paper scraps. Harter also has several J B. Morse paintings, both large and small oils, and one watercolor. Other Jonathan Bradley Morse paintings are distributed throughout the family. The oils are quite dirty, and one is cracked pretty badly. Ms. Harter treasures two steno-pad sized sketchbooks of Jonathan Bradley Morse, pencil sketches. Black leather covers. Her mother treasured these and insisted that they and the paintings stay in the family.
After Jonathan's death, Eleanor Ecob Morse moved in with her daughter, Florence Morse Kingsley (Harter's great-grandmother) and son-in-law, Charles Rawson Kingsley on Staten Island at 116 Kingsley Avenue (named after him; he was a minister at Immanual Lutheran Church in Westerleigh) and their family, where she lived until her death.
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