Art

Market Scene, Savannah,
Hal Morrison (1848-1928)

Born in Canada on Prince Edward Island, Hal Morrison graduated from Harvard Medical School. He spent two years as a physician with the Intercolonial Railroad, before "abandoning that profession entirely to rove over the whole world and paint what pleased me." The following seven years included travel and study in Europe until, by 1882, Morrison had moved to Bainbridge, Georgia for health reasons. According to the Atlanta Constitution newspaper, dated March 26, 1883, he then resettled in Atlanta "to open a studio and teach students in oil and water colors." Morrison steadily developed his career as a respected artist and teacher, earning a reputation that extended far beyond the South. He became best known for his still lifes of flowers, fruit, fish, and game, as well as Southern genre scenes, as seen in this example.

An avid outdoorsman who enjoyed hunting and fishing, Morrison was skilled at taxidermy, collecting and preparing specimens for his paintings. An 1889 Constitution article praised his still life paintings in the Piedmont Exposition that year: " It is not art, but nature in superb perfection. In a study of two wild ducks hung against a barn door, he seemed to have reached the height of his art, and the realistic effect of some fish hung against a rusty hinged barn door is simply wonderful. Another exquisite fish study shows a red snapper and some trout lying against a game bag beside the waters of a tropical stream." Morrison often traveled to work in Florida during the winter seasons and to North Carolina or his native Canada for the summers, producing numerous still life and landscape paintings from these excursions.

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