User:Gamaliel/Susan Walker Morse Lind

The Muse by Samuel Morse, ca. 1836-37)

Susan Walker Morse Lind (September 1819–1885) was the daughter of American inventor and painter Samuel Morse and the subject of his portrait The Muse, currently in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

She was born Susan Walker Morse, the eldest child of Samuel Finley Breese Morse and his first wife, Lucretia Pickering Walker Morse. Her mother died in 1925, a few weeks after giving birth to a third child. She lived with her grandparents Jedidiah and Elizabeth Morse in New Haven, Connecticut until their deaths, and when she was ten she was cared for by Lucretia's sister and her husband in Concord, New Hampshire. Due to the demands of his painting career, her father lived an itinerant lifestyle and saw her infrequently.

After a three year absence in Europe, Samuel Morse met his daughter again at the age of seventeen and painted her in a celebrated portrait called The Muse. Susan Morse is depicted in a contemplative pause while drawing in a sketchbook, a depiction thought to be the personification of that art. The work was praised when it went on display at the National Academy of Design in 1837, though Samuel Morse was already abandoning painting for invention.

Susan Morse was also the subject of one of Samuel Morse's early daguerreotypes. After meeting Louis Daguerre in 1839