John Francis Murphy (December 11, 1853 – January 30, 1921) was an American Irish landscape painter. His style moved from poetic

Tonalism Tonalism was an artistic style that emerged in the 1880s when American artists began to paint landscape forms with an overall tone of colored atmosphere or mist. Between 1880 and 1915, dark, neutral hues such as gray, brown or blue, often domina ...

to the innovative application of multiple layers of pigment, in order to create a sparse, brooding landscape, later in his career.

Biography

John Francis Murphy was born at

Oswego, New York Oswego () is a city in Oswego County, New York, United States. The population was 16,921 at the 2020 census. Oswego is located on Lake Ontario in Upstate New York, about 35 miles (55km) northwest of Syracuse. It promotes itself as "The Port C ...

on December 11, 1853. His father, Martin Francis Murphy (1822-1899) had immigrated from

Waterford "Waterford remains the untaken city" , mapsize = 220px , pushpin_map = Ireland#Europe , pushpin_map_caption = Location within Ireland##Location within Europe , pushpin_relief = 1 , coordinates ...

to Oswego where he married Hannah Gregory (1839-1899). In 1870, he moved to Chicago and became a sign painter then moving to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in 1875 where he taught himself painting. In 1887, he built a studio in Arkville, New York and founded the Pakatakan Artist Colony. He first exhibited at the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...

in 1876, and was made an associate in 1885 and a full academician two years later. He became a member of the

Society of American Artists The Society of American Artists was an American artists group. It was formed in 1877 by artists who felt the National Academy of Design did not adequately meet their needs, and was too conservative. The group began meeting in 1874 at the home of ...

in 1901 and of the

American Watercolor Society The American Watercolor Society, founded in 1866, is a nonprofit membership organization devoted to the advancement of watercolor painting in the United States. Qualifications AWS judges the work of a painter before granting admission to the soc ...

. At first influenced by Wyant and Inness, after 1900 he attacked the modern problems of light and air, thus combining the old and new theories of landscape painting. His chief characteristics are extreme refinement and charm, poetic sentiment, and beauty of surface. His composition is simple and his rendering of soil unique. A past master of values, he preferred the quiet and subdued aspects of nature. He received numerous awards, including a gold medal at Charleston in 1902 and the Inness medal in 1910. He died on January 30, 1921, of pneumonia in New York City.

Gallery

File:Brooklyn Museum - A Stormy Day - John Francis Murphy - overall.jpg, '' A Stormy Day '' -

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

File:John Francis Murphy landscape.png, John Francis Murphy, Brooding New York landscape, c. 1900 .

Works

Representative examples of his work are: * ''October'' (

Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

) * ''The Path to the Village'' (

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...

, Washington) * ''Indian Summer'' (National Gallery of Art, Washington) * ''Indian Summer Oaks'', 1887 ( Cahoon Museum of American Art,

Cotuit Cotuit ( ) is one of the villages of the Town of Barnstable on Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. Located on a peninsula on the south side of Barnstable about midway between Falmouth and Hyannis, Cotuit is bounded by t ...

, Massachusetts) * ''The Old Barn'' (

Metropolitan Museum The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, New York) * ''The Hill Top'' (

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

) * ''Afternoon Lights on the Hills'' (Carnegie Institute,

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

) * ''Neglected Lands'' (Buffalo Academy) * ''Twilight'' * ''Late September'' * ''Golden Autumn'' (

National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum is a museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, with more than 28,000 American West, Western and Native Americans in the United States, American Indian art works and Artifact (archaeology), ar ...

, Oklahoma City) * ''The River Farm'' * ''Tints of a Vanished Past'', awarded the 1885 Second

Hallgarten Prize The Julius Hallgarten Prizes (defunct) were a trio of prestigious art prizes awarded by the National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samue ...

by the

. * ''Golden Autumn'', 1898 (

Salmagundi Club The Salmagundi Club, sometimes referred to as the Salmagundi Art Club, is a fine arts center founded in 1871 in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan, New York City. Since 1917, it has been located at 47 Fifth Avenue. , its membership roster ...

, New York)

References

Sources

* Cahoon Museum of American Art: https://web.archive.org/web/20120326172806/http://www.cahoonmuseum.org/american-impressionism.php * Sherman, Frederic Fairchild, ''American Painters of Yesterday and Today'', 1919, Priv. print in New York. Chapter: Miniature landscapes by J. Francis Murphy: https://archive.org/stream/americanpainters00sheriala#page/n17/mode/2up

External links

''Paintings by J. Francis Murphy''
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF) {{DEFAULTSORT:Murphy, John Francis 1853 births 1921 deaths American people of Irish descent 19th-century American painters 19th-century American male artists American male painters 20th-century American painters American landscape painters People from Oswego, New York American Impressionist painters Tonalism 20th-century American male artists