International studio (53.1914)

INTERNATIONAL
STUDIO
VOL. LI1I. No. 209 Copyright, 1914, by John Lane Company JULY, 1914

FRANCIS MURPHY: A MASTER OF
AMERICAN LANDSCAPE
BY CHARLES L. BUCHANAN
Discrimination is not one of the domi-
nant characteristics of the times. We lump the
gold and the gilt together; we pay a transient trib-
ute to the superlative merits of Fremstad’s
“Isolde,” and a few moments later we revel in the
debauched, insipid refrain of some popular tune.
We charter tugs to go down the bay and welcome
the latest alien adversary of sanity of line, charm
of colour and cleanliness of purpose; how often do
we come across a paragraph or so devoted to the
conspicuous loveliness of J. Francis Murphy?

Because we are neighbors to the high level of excel-
lence the latter affords us, we seem to feel a justi-
fication in taking him for granted, and though his
particular degree of sheer charm is probably un-
equalled in the world of art to-day, it nevertheless
fails to compete, so it seems, with the press-agent
possibilities of the remote, the bizarre, the incom-
prehensible.
I call attention to this only because it is difficult
to think of Murphy without experiencing an indig-
nation at that hide-bound timidity in critical cir-
cles which fears to commit itself to an indorse-
ment of contemporary endeavour, unless, as the
unfortunate fashion is now-a-days, this endeavour
be of a questionably sensational nature. Critical


Courtesy Adolph Lewisohn, Esq.
IN THE SHADOW OF THE HILLS BY J. FRANCIS MURPHY


III