The Reverend Thomas Harvey Skinner

Samuel Morse and Thomas Harvey Skinner were born a few weeks apart in the spring of 1791, Morse in Massachusetts and Skinner at Harveys Neck on the coast of North Carolina. By the mid-1830s both men had landed in the same corner of New York. Skinner came to the city in 1835 to lead a new Presbyterian congregation on Mercer Street, near Washington Square, and he was among the founders of Union Theological Seminary the following year. Morse taught painting at the young University of the City of New York, today New York University, and worked in its building on the square. That is where this portrait was made. The evidence is in Morse's own hand on the back. In an inscription dated March 1860, presenting the picture to his friends Mr and Mrs Wainwright, he wrote that he had painted it about the year 1836 or 1837 in the university, so more than 20 years on even the painter could not pin down the year. He painted it on paperboard rather than canvas. Skinner was admired in his day as one of the foremost preachers in the country, yet Morse gives him nothing of the pulpit, only a black coat, a high white collar and a steady sideways look.