Wallace Morgan

Wallace Morgan. [Born] 1873. Artist.

There are artists in the Century who say that, when Wallace Morgan died, there died the greatest American artist of our times: there are none who would say less than that he was the greatest pictorial historian in the life-time of any of us.

Fifty years ago, you must remember, when an editor wanted a picture to print, an artist had to draw it. Speed and precision of drawing were the requisites of all the illustrators; but only a few were artists and Wallace Morgan was their acknowledged master. For a statement of how we walked, how we talked, how we looked, what we were, there is no pictorial record in existence as true as Wallace Morgan’s, printed in the newspapers and magazines of his working life.

I saw him only once, here in the Century, at dinner. The artists present had eyes and talk for no other. Three days later he was dead and I was told again the story, showing his mastery of line and form and style, of the department store owner who had hired him to make fashion drawings. “Mr. Morgan,” he said, “ease up. The customers come in with the clippings in their hands wanting clothes that look like these. We can’t make clothes like these and neither can anybody else.”

This was, you see, more than a Zeuxis who painted grapes so naturally that the birds flew at the picture to eat the fruit. This was a great human being who understood us through and through and left a masterly record of what we were. There was nothing that he could not draw with power, distinction and style.

Source: Henry Allen Moe Papers, Mss.B.M722. Reproduced by permission of American Philosophical Society Library & Museum, Philadelphia

Henry Allen MoeMember profile currently not available; contact Archivist for information on this Centurion
Henry Allen Moe Papers, 1948 Memorials