Scene from Spenser’s "Fairie Queene": Una and the Dwarf

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Scene from Spenser’s "Fairie Queene": Una and the Dwarf

Artist Samuel Finley Breese Morse (American, 1791-1872)

Date1827

DimensionsFrame: 32 3/8 × 49 1/4 × 2 1/2 in. (82.2 × 125.1 × 6.4 cm)

MediumOil on wood panel

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott

Object number

1951.295

On View

Toledo Museum of Art (2445 Monroe Street), Gallery, 29

Label TextIn this scene from Edmund Spenser’s 1590 epic poem The Faerie Queene, King Arthur and his squire have come upon the disconsolate Una and her servant, a dwarf. They explain to Arthur that a giant has captured Una’s love, the Redcross Knight. They gesture to the knight’s abandoned armor to emphasize his vulnerable situation and to plea for help. The painting was commissioned, along with 11 others by American artists, to decorate a new Hudson River passenger steamboat, the Albany. Better known today as the inventor of the telegraph, Samuel F.B. Morse studied in London with American artist Benjamin West (see his paintings in this gallery). Like West, he was inspired by the traditions of European painting and literature, creating idealized images that had only limited appeal in the new democracy.Published ReferencesMorse, S., Discourse Delivered on Thursday, May 3, 1827, in the Chapel of Columbia College, before the National Academy of Design, on Its First Anniversary.
New York Mirror, vol. 5, 1828, p. 376 (review of 1828 exhibition at the National Academy of Design).

"To The Crayon," The Crayon, IV, June 1857, p. 181.

Cummings, T., Historic Annals of the National Academy of Design, Philadelphia, 1865, p. 114.

Morse, E., ed., Samuel F. B. Morse Letters and Journals, Boston, 1914, I, pp. 288-289.

National Academy of Design, New York, National Academy of Design Exhibition Record 1826-1860, 1943, vol. 2, p. 32.

Larkin, O., Samuel F. B. Morse and American Democratic Art, Boston, 1954, p. 91.

Gerdts, W., "Inman and Irving: Derivations from Sleepy Hollow," Antiques, LXXIV, Nov. 1958, p. 421.

Slayman, James H., "The Age of Good Feeling," The Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, vol. 2, no. 2, Autumn 1959, p. 16-17, repr. p. 14.

Young, Mahonri Sharp, "From Howling Wilderness to Queensborough Bridge," Apollo, vol. 86, no. 70, Dec. 1967, p. 497, 498, repr. fig. 8, p. 500.

Konheim, L., "The Decoration of the Steamboat Albany: Thirteen Paintings by Contemporary Painters Commissioned by James Stevens of Hoboken, N. J. in 1827," unpublished M. A. thesis, New York University, 1968, pp. 6, 8, 9, 11-13, repr. opp. p. 12.

Thorpe, J. B. "New York Artists 50 Years Ago," Appleton's Journal, vol. 7, May 25, 1972, pp. 572, 574.

Rider, P., "Samuel F. B. Morse and The Faerie Queene," Research Studies, XLVI, Dec. 1978, pp. 204-213, repr.

Toledo Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, American Paintings, Toledo, 1979, pp. 83-84, pl. 18.

Staiti, Paul J., "Samuel F. B. Morse and The Search for The Grand Style," in Samuel F. B. Morse, New York, Grey Art Gallery, 1982, p. 55, repr. fig. 55.

Krieg, Joann Peck, "The Transmogrification of Faerie Land into Prairie Land," Journal of American Studies, vol. 19, no. 2, 1985, pp. 202-206, fig. 1.

Christie's, New York, Important American Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture of the 19th and 20th Centuries, May 26, 1988, p. 32 [not in sale].

Kloss, William, Samuel F. B. Morse, New York, 1988, p. 107, 108, repr.

Staiti, Paul J., Samuel F. B. Morse, Cambridge (Eng.) 1989, pp. 128, 129, 160, fig. 81.

Myers, Kenneth John, "Art and Commerce in Jacksonian America: the Steamboat 'Albany' Collection," Art Bulletin, vol. 82, no. 3, Sept. 2000, pp. 513-518, 526, nos. 50, 51, 53, 56, fig. 20, p. 516.
Exhibition HistoryNew York, National Academy of Design, 1828, no. 10.

Boston, Atheneum.

New York, National Academy of Design; Tulsa, Gilcrease Museum; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Rave Reviews: American Art and Its Critics, 1826-1925, 2000-2001, no. 5, pp. 168-169, repr. (col.).