Painter, printmaker, and illustrator Vernon Jay Morse was born in Benton Harbor, Michigan, in 1898. He moved to San Francisco as a young man and attended classes at the California School of Fine Arts, now the San Francisco Art Institute, studying under Eric Spencer and Constance Macky from 1919 to 1921. Soon thereafter he relocated to Southern California, eventually settling in Burbank, where he died in 1965. By the end of his life Morse's name was synonymous with California Scene painting, with contemporaries including Millard Sheets, Phil Dike, Emil Kosa Jr., Milford Zornes, and Rex Brandt.

Morse was a member of the Laguna Beach Artists Association; Oakland Art League; and the California Watercolor Society. He exhibited at the Oakland Art Gallery in 1927; the Painters and Sculptors of LA exhibition in the years 1929 - 1937; the California State Fair, 1930; the San Francisco Museum of Art (now SFMoMA), 1935; the Academy of Western Painters, LA, 1935 - 1938; and the Golden Gate International Exhibition, 1939.