Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art

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Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art
Winter Park FL CH Morse Museum01.jpg
USA Florida location map.svg
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Location within Florida
Established1942
Location445 North Park Avenue
Winter Park, Florida
Coordinates 28°36′03″N81°21′05″W / 28.60086°N 81.35140°W / 28.60086; -81.35140
Type Art
Website www.morsemuseum.org

The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, a museum noted for its Art Nouveau collection, houses the most comprehensive collection of the works of Louis Comfort Tiffany found anywhere, a major collection of American art pottery, and fine collections of late-19th- and early-20th-century American paintings, graphics and the decorative arts. It is located in Winter Park, Florida.

Contents

History

The museum was founded by Jeannette Genius McKean in 1942 and dedicated to Chicago industrialist Charles Hosmer Morse, her grandfather. [1] The museum's first director was her husband, Hugh McKean.

The museum was first located on the campus of Rollins College. [2] There, in 1955, the McKeans organized the first exhibition of works by Louis Comfort Tiffany since the artist's death in 1933.

In 1957, Hugh McKean learned from Tiffany's daughter that Tiffany's estate, Laurelton Hall, had burned to a ruin. McKean, [3] who had been an art student at Tiffany's Laurelton Hall estate in 1930, remembered Jeannette's exact words at the scene of the devastation: "Let's buy everything that is left and try to save it."

Among these acquisitions were parts of Tiffany's 1893 chapel for the World's Columbian Exposition; award-winning leaded glass windows; and major architectural elements such as the poppy loggia, which was donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and installed in the Charles Englehart Court. [4] [5]

The museum moved to a location on East Welborne Avenue, Winter Park in 1978. [2] The museum opened at its current location on Park Avenue in 1995, and it now has more than 19,000 square feet (1,800 m2) of public and exhibition space.

In February 2017, the museum celebrated its 75th anniversary with a retrospective exhibition.

The Tiffany Collection

Spring panel from the Four Seasons window, c. 1899-1900. This panel was on display at Louis Comfort Tiffany's home Laurelton Hall, and is on view at The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art. Spring panel from the Four Seasons leaded-glass window by Louis Comfort Tiffany.jpg
Spring panel from the Four Seasons window, c. 1899–1900. This panel was on display at Louis Comfort Tiffany's home Laurelton Hall, and is on view at The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art.

The Tiffany collection forms the centerpiece of the Morse Museum. It includes examples in every medium he explored, in every kind of work he produced, and from every period of his life. Holdings range from award-winning leaded-glass windows down to glass buttons. It includes paintings and extensive examples of his pottery, as well as jewelry, enamels, mosaics, watercolors, lamps, furniture and examples of his Favrile blown glass.

The Tiffany collection includes the reconstructed Tiffany Chapel he created for the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893, with its brilliantly colorful windows, mosaics, Byzantine-Romanesque architectural elements and furnishings. The chapel was fully reassembled and opened in April 1999 to the general public for the first time in more than 100 years. It is approximately 39 feet (12 m) long and 23 feet (7.0 m) wide, rising at its highest point to about 24 feet (7.3 m).

In February 2011, the Morse opened a wing that provided for 6,000 square feet (560 m2) gallery space for the permanent exhibition of its collection of art and architectural objects from Tiffany’s Long Island country estate, Laurelton Hall. [6]

Other collections

Morse Museum Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art (Winter Park, Florida) 001.jpg
Morse Museum

Other leaded-glass windows in the collection include work by William Morris, Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, John LaFarge and Arthur J. Nash. Emile Gallé, René Lalique, and Peter Carl Fabergé are represented in the jewelry and silver. The furniture collection includes pieces by Emile Gallé, Louis Majorelle, and Gustav Stickley, as well as those by Tiffany. The museum also has over 800 pieces in its 19th-century American Art Pottery collection, including about 300 Rookwood pieces. The sculpture collection includes work by Thomas Crawford, Hiram Powers, Daniel Chester French, John Rogers, and others.

The museum also has a collection of American paintings and prints. The paintings include work by Samuel F. B. Morse (a relative of Charles Hosmer Morse), Thomas Doughty, George Inness, John Singer Sargent, Rembrandt Peale, Cecilia Beaux, Martin Johnson Heade, Maxfield Parrish, Arthur B. Davies, Hermann Herzog, Thomas Hart Benton, and Samuel Colman. Prints include work by some of the same artists as well as Grant Wood, Mary Cassatt, Paul Cézanne, Childe Hassam, John Steuart Curry, and Edward Hopper.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis Comfort Tiffany</span> American stained glass and jewelry designer (1848–1933)

Louis Comfort Tiffany was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in stained glass. He is associated with the art nouveau and aesthetic art movements. He was affiliated with a prestigious collaborative of designers known as the Associated Artists, which included Lockwood de Forest, Candace Wheeler, and Samuel Colman. Tiffany designed stained glass windows and lamps, glass mosaics, blown glass, ceramics, jewellery, enamels, and metalwork. He was the first design director at his family company, Tiffany & Co., founded by his father Charles Lewis Tiffany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siegfried Bing</span> German-French art dealer

Samuel Siegfried Bing, who usually gave his name as S. Bing, was a German-French art dealer who lived in Paris as an adult, and who helped introduce Japanese art and artworks to the West and was a factor in the development of the Art Nouveau style during the late nineteenth century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John La Farge</span> American artist (1835–1910)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Favrile glass</span> Type of art glass invented by Louis Comfort Tiffany

Favrile glass is a type of iridescent art glass developed by Louis Comfort Tiffany. He patented this process in 1894 and first produced the glass for manufacture in 1896 in Queens, New York. It differs from most iridescent glasses because the color is ingrained in the glass itself, as well as having distinctive coloring. Tiffany won a grand prize at the 1900 Paris Exposition for his Favrile glass.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samuel Colman</span> American painter (1832–1920)

Samuel Colman was an American painter, interior designer, and writer, probably best remembered for his paintings of the Hudson River.

The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation was founded in 1918 by Louis Comfort Tiffany to operate his estate, Laurelton Hall, in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. It was designed to be a summer retreat for artists and craftspeople. In 1946 the estate closed and the foundation changed its purpose from a retreat to the bestowing of grants to artists.

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Laurelton Hall was the home of noted artist Louis Comfort Tiffany, located in Laurel Hollow a village in the town of Oyster Bay in Long Island, New York. The 84-room mansion on 600 acres of land, designed in the Art Nouveau style, combined Islamic motifs with connection to nature, was completed in 1905, and housed many of Tiffany's most notable works, as well as serving as a work of art in and of itself. It was also commonly referred to as the "Oyster Bay estate".

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tiffany glass</span> Glass developed by Tiffany Studios in New York City by Louis Comfort Tiffany and others

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Charles Jay Connick (1875–1945) was a prominent American painter, muralist, and designer best known for his work in stained glass in the Gothic Revival style. Born in Springboro, Pennsylvania, Connick eventually settled in the Boston area where he opened his studio in 1913. Connick's work is contained in many preeminent churches and chapels, including examples in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, New York City, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. He also authored the book Adventures in Light and Color in 1937. Connick's studio continued to operate, and remained a leading producer of stained glass, until 1986.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tiffany Chapel</span> 1893 glass work of art by Louis Comfort Tiffany

The Tiffany Chapel is a chapel interior designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany and created by the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company. First installed for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the chapel was later moved to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, then re-acquired by Tiffany in 1916 and displayed in his own home. After the chapel was dismantled in 1949, parts were sold and the remaining portions were put on display at the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in Winter Park, Florida in April 1999.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lockwood de Forest</span> American artist

Lockwood de Forest was an American painter, interior designer and furniture designer. A key figure in the Aesthetic Movement, he introduced the East Indian craft revival to Gilded Age America.

Jeannette Genius McKean (1909–1989) was a painter, interior decorator, Louis Comfort Tiffany art glass collector, Morse Museum founder and benefactor of Rollins College. She is listed as a Great Floridian. The Jeanette Genius McKean Memorial 5k run is held annually in her honor.

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<i>The 9:45 Accommodation</i> Series of paintings by Edward Lamson Henry

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agnes Northrop</span> American glass artist (1857-1953)

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References

  1. "Louis Comfort Tiffany, the Morse Museum, Orlando, Florida". www.morsemuseum.org. Archived from the original on 2021-01-15. Retrieved 2021-07-01.
  2. 1 2 "The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in Orlando, Florida". www.morsemuseum.org. Retrieved 2016-12-16.
  3. "Hugh F. McKean, first director of the Morse Museum in Orlando, Florida". www.morsemuseum.org. Archived from the original on 2021-01-15. Retrieved 2021-07-01.
  4. "Architectural Elements from Laurelton Hall, Oyster Bay, New York | Louis Comfort Tiffany | 1978.10.1 | Work of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art". The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Retrieved 2016-12-16.
  5. "Designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany | Architectural Elements from Laurelton Hall, Oyster Bay, New York | American | The Met". The Metropolitan Museum of Art, i.e. The Met Museum. Retrieved 2016-12-16.
  6. "Morse Museum Expansion Recalls Grandeur of Louis Comfort Tiffany's Personal Estate" (PDF) (Press release). The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art. August 12, 2010. Retrieved January 21, 2016.