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 Louis Comfort Tiffany (February 18, 1848 – January 17, 1933) was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in stained glass. He is the American artist most associated with the Art NouveauL ...

found anywhere, a major collection of

American art pottery American art pottery (sometimes capitalized) refers to aesthetically distinctive hand-made ceramics in earthenware and stoneware from the period 1870-1950s. Ranging from tall vases to tiles, the work features original designs, simplified shapes, an ...

, and fine collections of late-19th- and early-20th-century American paintings, graphics and the decorative arts. It is located in

Winter Park, Florida Winter Park is a city in Orange County, Florida, United States. The population was 30,183 according to the 2022 census population estimate. It is part of the Orlando–Kissimmee–Sanford, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area. Winter Park was f ...

USA The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

History

The museum was founded by Jeannette Genius McKean in 1942 and dedicated to her grandfather, Chicago industrialist Charles Hosmer Morse. The museum's first director was her husband, Hugh McKean. The museum was first located on the campus of Rollins College. 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, 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 The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, hel ...

; 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. The Museum moved to a new location on East Welborne Avenue, Winter Park, in 1978. The museum opened at its current location on Park Avenue in 1995, and now has more than 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 leaded-glass window by Louis Comfort Tiffany

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

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 long and wide, rising at its highest point to about . In February 2011, the Morse opened a new wing that provided for gallery space for the permanent exhibition of its collection of art and architectural objects from Tiffany’s Long Island country estate, Laurelton Hall.

Other collections

Other leaded-glass windows in the collection include work by

William Morris William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, architectural conservationist, printer, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He ...

Louis Sullivan Louis Henry Sullivan (September 3, 1856 – April 14, 1924) was an American architect, and has been called a "father of skyscrapers" and "father of modernism". He was an influential architect of the Chicago School, a mentor to Frank Lloy ...

Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements o ...

John LaFarge John La Farge (March 31, 1835 – November 14, 1910) was an American artist whose career spanned illustration, murals, interior design, painting, and popular books on his Asian travels and other art-related topics. La Farge is best known for ...

and Arthur J. Nash. Emile Gallé,

René Lalique René Jules Lalique (6 April 1860 – 1 May 1945) was a French jeweller, medallist, and glass designer known for his creations of glass art, perfume bottles, vases, jewellery, chandeliers, clocks, and automobile hood ornaments. Life Lalique' ...

, and

Peter Carl Fabergé Peter Carl Fabergé, also known as Karl Gustavovich Fabergé (russian: Карл Гу́ставович Фаберже́, ''Karl Gustavovich Faberzhe''; 30 May 1846 – 24 September 1920), was a Russian jeweller best known for the famous Faberg� ...

are represented in the jewelry and silver. The furniture collection includes pieces by Emile Gallé,

Louis Majorelle Louis-Jean-Sylvestre Majorelle, usually known simply as Louis Majorelle, (26 September 1859 – 15 January 1926) was a French decorator and furniture designer who manufactured his own designs, in the French tradition of the ''ébéniste''. ...

, and

Gustav Stickley Gustav Stickley (March 9, 1858 – April 15, 1942) was an American furniture manufacturer, design leader, publisher, and a leading voice in the American Arts and Crafts movement. Stickley's design philosophy was a major influence on American ...

, 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 Hiram Powers (July 29, 1805 – June 27, 1873) was an American neoclassical sculptor. He was one of the first 19th-century American artists to gain an international reputation, largely based on his famous marble sculpture ''The Greek Slave''. ...

, Daniel Chester French, John Rogers, and others. The museum also has a good collection of American paintings and prints. The paintings include work by

Samuel F. B. Morse Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was an American inventor and painter. After having established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his middle age Morse contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph ...

(a relative of

Charles Hosmer Morse Charles Hosmer Morse (September 23, 1833 – May 5, 1921) was an American businessman and philanthropist. Morse was born at St. Johnsbury, Vermont. He graduated from St. Johnsbury Academy in 1850. Shortly after graduation he joined his uncle, Ze ...

), Thomas Doughty,

George Inness George Inness (May 1, 1825 – August 3, 1894) was a prominent American landscape painter. Now recognized as one of the most influential American artists of the nineteenth century, Inness was influenced by the Hudson River School at the s ...

, John Singer Sargent,

Rembrandt Peale Rembrandt Peale (February 22, 1778 – October 3, 1860) was an American artist and museum keeper. A prolific portrait painter, he was especially acclaimed for his likenesses of presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Peale's style w ...

Cecilia Beaux Eliza Cecilia Beaux (May 1, 1855 – September 17, 1942) was an American society portraitist, whose subjects included First Lady Edith Roosevelt, Admiral Sir David Beatty and Georges Clemenceau. Trained in Philadelphia, she went on to study ...

, Martin Johnson Heade,

Maxfield Parrish Maxfield Parrish (July 25, 1870 – March 30, 1966) was an American painter and illustrator active in the first half of the 20th century. He is known for his distinctive saturated hues and idealized neo-classical imagery. His career spann ...

, Arthur B. Davies, Hermann Herzog, Thomas Hart Benton, and

Samuel Colman Samuel Colman (March 4, 1832 – March 26, 1920) was an American painter, interior designer, and writer, probably best remembered for his paintings of the Hudson River. Life and career Born in Portland, Maine, Colman moved to New York City ...

. Prints include work by some of the same artists as well as Grant Wood,

Mary Cassatt Mary Stevenson Cassatt (; May 22, 1844June 14, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh's North Side), but lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar De ...

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically d ...

Childe Hassam Frederick Childe Hassam (; October 17, 1859 – August 27, 1935) was an American Impressionist painter, noted for his urban and coastal scenes. Along with Mary Cassatt and John Henry Twachtman, Hassam was instrumental in promulgating Impressioni ...

John Steuart Curry John Steuart Curry (November 14, 1897 – August 29, 1946) was an American painter whose career spanned the years from 1924 until his death. He was noted for his paintings depicting rural life in his home state, Kansas. Along with Thomas Hart B ...

, and

Edward Hopper Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was an American realist painter and printmaker. While he is widely known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching. Hopper created subdued drama ...

References

External links

Web site of The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art

Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall: an artist's country estate
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF), which contains material from the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art.
"The Man Who Could Do Everything: Louis C. Tiffany at the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum" by Barrymore Laurence Scherer, ''The Magazine Antiques'', July/August 2011.
Review of the Tiffany galleries with image gallery.
"Morse Museum's expansion makes it the place for Tiffany" by Matthew J. Palm, ''Orlando Sentinel'', February 15, 2011.
Article on the opening of the Tiffany wing. {{authority control 1942 establishments in Florida Art museums established in 1942 Art museums and galleries in Florida Buildings and structures in Winter Park, Florida Glass museums and galleries in the United States Museums in Orange County, Florida Museums of American art Tiffany Studios