Bradley, Morton C., Jr. (Morton Clark), 1912-2004

American sculptor, art restorer and author. Graduated from Harvard University with a degree in fine arts in 1933. Once the head conservator at Harvard's Fogg Art Museum, Bradley was recognized as the premier American art restorer in the 1940s and 1950s. The author of The Treatment of Paintings and The New Testament in Cadenced Form.

Morton Clark Bradley was born in Arlington, Massachusetts in 1912. He attended Arlington High School and went on to Harvard University where he graduated with a degree in fine arts in 1933. After graduation he won a scholarship to study piano in Europe. He was an accomplished pianist and a respected artist noted for his metal sculptures. Once the head conservator at Harvard's Fogg Art Museum, Bradley was recognized as the premier American art restorer in the 1940s and 1950s. He was a published author and his 1950 The Treatment of Paintings is today considered an historic reference work. He also published The New Testament in Cadenced Form in which he changed the structure of the Gospels into a more easily readable form.

Morton C. Bradley, Jr. (1912 - 2004) was the only son of Morton C. Bradley and his wife Marie Louise (Boisen) Bradley. He was born and raised in Arlington, MA, but always spoke of himself as a Hoosier due to his grandparents’ and parents’ long association with Bloomington, Indiana. Known as Bob to his family and friends, Bradley graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1933 where he studied fine arts. He spent the next six years in further independent study and research, the first two in Europe. From there, he wrote long, chatty letters home to his mother, father and sister in Arlington. In 1944, he began working at Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum in their paintings conservation lab and by 1950, he had gone into private practice as a paintings conservator. Interested in color theory and geometric forms and the relationship between those forms and color sequences, he began creating geometric sculptures in 1966. For more information on that body of work, see: http://www.iub.edu/~iuam/online_modules/bradley/index.html . Mr. Bradley never married and lived in the family home with his parents and unmarried sister, then by himself after their deaths.

Morton Clark Bradley (1878 – 1954) was born in Oxford, Indiana. While studying mathematics at Indiana University in the 1890s, he met his future wife, Marie Louise Boisen, who was also an undergraduate student. He graduated in 1899 and the couple married in 1900. They moved to New York City, then Boston where he sold insurance and then became a controller for the Boston and Maine Railroad Company.

Marie Louise (Boisen) Bradley (1879 – 1965) was the grand-daughter of Theophilus A. and Rebecca D. Wylie of Bloomington, Indiana. Her mother, Louisa (Wylie) Boisen, was widowed in January 1884 and brought her children, Marie and Anton, back home to Bloomington to live with her parents. Marie graduated from Indiana University in 1900 and that summer married Morton C. Bradley who had graduated the previous year. The couple had two children, Louise and Morton. Marie accompanied her son when he first went to Europe in 1934, and traveled with him for three months and returned in 1935 to travel with him in England.

Louise Bradley (1908 – 1979) was the only daughter of Morton C. and Marie Bradley. She attended Indiana University for one year, then transferred to and graduated from Radcliff College. She worked for Raytheon Corporation and travelled widely. She never married and lived her whole life in her parents’ home.