Morse spent four years in Europe in close study, and was then obliged to return to America by lack of means to carry on his education in the Old World.  He had not indeed reached the high degree of proficiency which he had hoped to obtain before returning home, but he was possessed of natural talents and acquired skill, which fairly entitled him to recognition as one of our leading artists.  This recognition never came to him, however, and his artist life in this country was a series of sorrowful disappointments.  He found no opportunity of devoting himself to the higher branches of his art, and was obliged to confine himself entirely to portrait painting as a means of livelihood.  His artist career is thus referred to by Mr. Tuckerman: 

“Morse went abroad under the care of Allston, and was the pupil of West and Copley.  Hence he is naturally regarded by a later generation as the connecting bond that unites the present and the past in the brief annals of our artist history.  But his claim to such recognition does not lie altogether in the fact that he was a pioneer; it has been worthily evidenced by his constant devotion to the great cause itself.  Younger artists speak of him with affection and respect, because he has ever been zealous in the promotion of a taste for, and a study of, the fine arts.  Having entered the field at too early a period to realize the promise of his youth, and driven by circumstances from the high aims he cherished, misanthropy was never suffered to grow out of personal disappointment.  He gazed reverently upon the goal it was not permitted him to reach, and ardently encouraged the spirit which he felt was only to be developed when wealth and leisure had given his countrymen opportunities to cultivate those tastes upon the prevalence of which the advancement of his favorite pursuit depends.  When, after the failure of one of his elaborate projects, he resolved to establish himself in New York, he was grieved to find that many petty dissensions kept the artists from each other.  He made it his business to heal these wounds and reconcile the animosities that thus retarded the progress of their common object.  He sought out and won the confidence of his isolated brothers, and one evening invited them all to his room ostensibly to eat strawberries and cream, but really to beguile them into something like agreeable intercourse.  He had experienced the good effect of a drawing club at Charleston, where many of the members were amateurs; and on the occasion referred to covered his table with prints, and scattered inviting casts around the apartment.  A very pleasant evening was the result, a mutual understanding was established, and weekly meetings unanimously agreed upon.  This auspicious gathering was the germ of the National Academy of Design, of which Morse became the first president, and before which he delivered the first course of lectures on the fine arts ever given in this country.”