Morgan Colt

Morgan Colt (11 September 1876 – 12 June 1926) was an American metalworker, furniture craftsman, impressionist painter, and architect. He helped found the New Hope, Bucks County, Pennsylvania colony of painters—the leading landscape school in the United States during the early 20th–century—but was better known as a craftsman than a painter, specializing in hand–wrought iron garden furniture and fire screens. Many of his paintings were accidentally destroyed after his death. and his grandfather was Roswell L. Colt. He attended the School of Architecture at Columbia University, graduating in 1901. He also studied art at the Academie Julian in Paris and with painter William Langson Lathrop in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Career

Architect

Colt qualified as an architect and practiced this profession in New York City. Around 1905, he began specializing in houses featuring hand–crafted wood and iron furniture. He also designed a house in New Hope, Pennsylvania for Robert W. Welsh. He also built a brick Tudor Revival style woodworking shop where he made wood furniture and chests detailed with Gothic–style tracery. In 2020, the Phillips Mill Foundation for the Arts announced a campaign had raised $425,000 to restore Colt's former residence and buildings.

Personal life In 1902, Colt married Jane Boudinot Keith, a preacher's daughter from Onteora, New York, and descendant of Elias Boudinot, a French Huguenot who was president of the Continental Congress. Jane's sister, Mary was married to John Brooks Leavitt.

They did not have any children. They initially lived in Flushing, Queens, New York and frequently visited Shinnecock, Long Island. Around 1912, they moved to New Hope, Pennsylvania, so Colt could dedicate his time to art. He built a houseboat, the Deewaydin, planning to live on it on the Delaware Canal. That turned out not to be practical. They moved into a rental house and later purchased, a barn that had housed pigs on the Phillips Mill farm of his friend, William Langson Lathrop, and converted it into a home and studio.

In 1912, he organized the Coryell's Ferry Chautauqua near New Hope; the weeklong event recurred annually for ten years. He was a member of the Boston Art Club, the New York Society of Craftsmen, the New York Yacht Club, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, and the Salmagundi Club. He also raised German Shepherd show dogs.

In 1926, Colt died of apoplexy at the Art Colony at New Hope, Pennsylvania at the age of 49 years. He was buried in Paterson, New Jersey.