Scene from Spenser’s "Fairie Queene": Una and the Dwarf

In this scene from Edmund Spenser’s 1590 epic poem The Faerie Queene, King Arthur and his squire have come upon the disconsolate Una and her servant, a dwarf. They explain to Arthur that a giant has captured Una’s love, the Redcross Knight. They gesture to the knight’s abandoned armor to emphasize his vulnerable situation and to plea for help. The painting was commissioned, along with 11 others by American artists, to decorate a new Hudson River passenger steamboat, the Albany.

Better known today as the inventor of the telegraph, Samuel F.B. Morse studied in London with American artist Benjamin West (see his paintings in this gallery). Like West, he was inspired by the traditions of European painting and literature, creating idealized images that had only limited appeal in the new democracy.