John Francis Murphy
"Birches"

Name: "Birches"
Brand: John Francis Murphy
Price: 35625 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Jim’s of Lambertville is proud to offer this artwork. Signed lower left. John Francis Murphy (1853 - 1921) John Francis Murphy is increasingly recognized today as one of the leading American Tonalist painters of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Over a productive career of some fifty years, he developed a highly individual aesthetic that was notable for its expressive and poetic nuance. His art attracted a wide following, and was avidly collected by individuals and museums both during his lifetime and in the period following his death. Murphy was born in Oswego, New York, near Lake Ontario. With his family he moved to Chicago in 1868, where his father was employed in the shipping industry. In Chicago, Murphy began working as a scene painter in a local theatre and was quickly promoted to lead his co-workers. Largely self-taught, his only training consisted of a few classes at the Chicago Academy of Design. There he became friends with Emil Carlsen and Theodore Robinson, and in 1873, Academy members elected him an Associate; a few weeks later, he became an Academician.

Creator:

John Francis Murphy (1853-1921, American)

Dimensions:

Height: 23 in (58.42 cm)Width: 29 in (73.66 cm)Depth: 3 in (7.62 cm)

Medium:

Canvas,Oil

Movement & Style:

Tonalist

Period:

Late 19th Century

Condition:

Gallery Location:

Lambertville, NJ

Reference Number:

Seller: 0002471stDibs: LU374583332

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Shop All John Francis Murphy

John Francis Murphy

Not one for dramatic statements and bold colors, John Francis Murphy preferred to use natural, muted tones in his warm, lyrical depictions of tree-lined country roads and mossy-green pastures. While the likes of George Inness as well as the Hudson River School informed the prolific American landscape painter's early pieces, the loose brushstrokes that define his later work owe to the influence of the French artists of the Barbizon School.

Murphy was born in Oswego, New York — a small town adjacent to Lake Ontario. In his late teens, he left New York and headed to Chicago, where he painted billboards and theater sets. His job in Chicago didn't last long, and Murphy soon found himself back east. He spent several summers teaching in Orange, New Jersey, while also operating out of an art studio in New York City that he opened in 1875.

While he shifted from painting rural New Jersey to depicting the mountains of southeastern New York State — and worked initially with watercolors before focusing solely on oil painting — Murphy remained a landscape painter throughout every phase of his career and he would eventually emerge as a leading figure of the American Tonalists. The primarily self-taught Murphy conveyed tranquility and stillness in his evocative paintings of farms, wooded scenes and mountains, celebrating life beyond the frenzied hustle and bustle of metropolitan areas.

Though most found him to be friendly and approachable, Murphy often preferred to work in seclusion, away from the distraction of others. He married painter Adah Clifford Smith in 1883 and the pair visited France toward the end of the decade. In 1887, he built a studio in Arkville, New York. He lived there and painted the Catskill Mountains throughout the summer and fall seasons that year and during those that followed, returning to Manhattan periodically to show his work.

A painting of Murphy’s appeared in the annual exhibition staged by the National Academy of Design, in New York City, in 1876. He earned comparisons to celebrated French painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and the numerous prizes he was awarded over the course of his career include those won at Chicago's World’s Columbian Expo in 1893, the American Watercolor Society in 1894 and San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Expo in 1915. Murphy’s works are held in collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and elsewhere.

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