DOI issue:
Nr. 209 (July, 1914)
DOI article:Buchanan, Charles L.: J. Francis Murphy: a master of american landscape
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43456#0008
universitats*
bibliothek
HEIDELBERG
s"J
/. Francis Murphy
appreciation to-day is represented, on the one hand
by a kind of fraternity of aesthetic Rip Van Win-
kles, to whom Inness, Wyant or Martin represent
the last word in American painting, and on the
other by a horde of irresponsibles who, in Wilde’s
felicitous phrase, can believe anything, so long as
it is incredible, but who can never, by any means,
comprehend the difficult nobility, the heroism (for
such it has indeed become) of standing guard over
tradition and reserve at a time when the fashions
of the hour mock sobriety, sentiment and morale.
Midway between these two injurious extremes you
find Murphy, a man of a keen, nimble, nervous
mentality, an inestimable combination of the old
and the new, a progressive, an explorer with the
best of them, but only—mark the distinction—in
so far as he can reconcile development with what
his conscience assures him is truth and beauty.
In the Leslie Ward sale some three years ago a
picture by Murphy sold for $2,600. At that time
Murphy’s price for that particular sized picture
was $650. When his Hillside Farm brought
$4,000 in the Evans sale it brought a trifle over
four times the price Mr. Evans had paid for it.
The two instances, chosen from a dozen such, sup-
ply emphatic examples of a living American paint-
er’s auction-room record that is both legitimately
significant and in many ways unique. It is the
inevitable reflex of that fortunate combination of
circumstances which has brought Murphy his
present large measure of conspicuousness. His
spurs have been won openly and honestly on his
merits as a conscientious builder for the future, on
his reputation as a man of an almost eccentric
aloofness from the ruts and pitfalls of patronage
and commercialism. The nervous tension result-
ing from the tenaciousness with which he grips his
artistic ideals might lead a superficial judgment to
censure him for an intolerance, an irascibility, a
kind of flurried impatience of restraint. He has
mostly isolated himself from the meretricious ad-
vices about him, and pursuing a preconceived
campaign, constituted himself a tyrannical sentry
over injudicious and shortsighted suggestion. He
is content with a comparatively scanty output of
ten or a dozen pictures a year. “I have had few
wants,” he says, “and therefore I’ve been doubly
able to remain my own master.” A kind of genial
asceticism rather fated to be misunderstood in so
industrious, so mercenary a generation. Hasty
and ill-considered workmanship is eliminated from
his scheme of things, and nothing will contribute
so definitely to a future’s high appraisal of his
work as the respect he has shown for his artistic
integrity.
No approach to a just estimate of his possible
value can be reached by any one unsympathetic to
the frugal simplicity, the native sweetness of his
point of view. Clean as a nut, blithe, boyish and
spirited, it remains essentially youthful and essen-
tially proud of its American birthright. Winslow
Homer, for all the bite and twang of his roaring,
epical blank verse, is not more saturated with a
national feeling, not more definitely removed from
the contaminating immigration of alien and arti-
ficial influences. True, Murphy has been called
the Corot of America (a kind of sombre Corot),
but the resemblance is largely superficial, residing
in some occasional similarity of treatment.
Murphy is closer to the root of things, his sym-
pathies dip deeper into a rank, pungent, solid,
substantial earth; he affectionately interprets the
arid reticence of naked and disabled
areas, of wasted, poverty-stricken
spaces and the loneliness of field and
farm. His is a kind of dry, plaintive
lyricism, with something of the wist-
ful quality of a folksong or music of
a sectional character, like Grieg or
Smetana. His two feet are planted
on a mere every-day, homely country-
side, fundamentally domestic, but the
result is always a transposition into
an idealized reality. Perhaps no one
painting to-day conveys so inevitable
an assurance of reality with so im-
maculate and delicate a loveliness of
method. “ I paint the woods I saw
as a boy,” Murphy says, momentarily
retrospective, and here, for better or
INDIAN SUMMER
BY J. FRANCIS MURPIIY
IV
bibliothek
HEIDELBERG
s"J
/. Francis Murphy
appreciation to-day is represented, on the one hand
by a kind of fraternity of aesthetic Rip Van Win-
kles, to whom Inness, Wyant or Martin represent
the last word in American painting, and on the
other by a horde of irresponsibles who, in Wilde’s
felicitous phrase, can believe anything, so long as
it is incredible, but who can never, by any means,
comprehend the difficult nobility, the heroism (for
such it has indeed become) of standing guard over
tradition and reserve at a time when the fashions
of the hour mock sobriety, sentiment and morale.
Midway between these two injurious extremes you
find Murphy, a man of a keen, nimble, nervous
mentality, an inestimable combination of the old
and the new, a progressive, an explorer with the
best of them, but only—mark the distinction—in
so far as he can reconcile development with what
his conscience assures him is truth and beauty.
In the Leslie Ward sale some three years ago a
picture by Murphy sold for $2,600. At that time
Murphy’s price for that particular sized picture
was $650. When his Hillside Farm brought
$4,000 in the Evans sale it brought a trifle over
four times the price Mr. Evans had paid for it.
The two instances, chosen from a dozen such, sup-
ply emphatic examples of a living American paint-
er’s auction-room record that is both legitimately
significant and in many ways unique. It is the
inevitable reflex of that fortunate combination of
circumstances which has brought Murphy his
present large measure of conspicuousness. His
spurs have been won openly and honestly on his
merits as a conscientious builder for the future, on
his reputation as a man of an almost eccentric
aloofness from the ruts and pitfalls of patronage
and commercialism. The nervous tension result-
ing from the tenaciousness with which he grips his
artistic ideals might lead a superficial judgment to
censure him for an intolerance, an irascibility, a
kind of flurried impatience of restraint. He has
mostly isolated himself from the meretricious ad-
vices about him, and pursuing a preconceived
campaign, constituted himself a tyrannical sentry
over injudicious and shortsighted suggestion. He
is content with a comparatively scanty output of
ten or a dozen pictures a year. “I have had few
wants,” he says, “and therefore I’ve been doubly
able to remain my own master.” A kind of genial
asceticism rather fated to be misunderstood in so
industrious, so mercenary a generation. Hasty
and ill-considered workmanship is eliminated from
his scheme of things, and nothing will contribute
so definitely to a future’s high appraisal of his
work as the respect he has shown for his artistic
integrity.
No approach to a just estimate of his possible
value can be reached by any one unsympathetic to
the frugal simplicity, the native sweetness of his
point of view. Clean as a nut, blithe, boyish and
spirited, it remains essentially youthful and essen-
tially proud of its American birthright. Winslow
Homer, for all the bite and twang of his roaring,
epical blank verse, is not more saturated with a
national feeling, not more definitely removed from
the contaminating immigration of alien and arti-
ficial influences. True, Murphy has been called
the Corot of America (a kind of sombre Corot),
but the resemblance is largely superficial, residing
in some occasional similarity of treatment.
Murphy is closer to the root of things, his sym-
pathies dip deeper into a rank, pungent, solid,
substantial earth; he affectionately interprets the
arid reticence of naked and disabled
areas, of wasted, poverty-stricken
spaces and the loneliness of field and
farm. His is a kind of dry, plaintive
lyricism, with something of the wist-
ful quality of a folksong or music of
a sectional character, like Grieg or
Smetana. His two feet are planted
on a mere every-day, homely country-
side, fundamentally domestic, but the
result is always a transposition into
an idealized reality. Perhaps no one
painting to-day conveys so inevitable
an assurance of reality with so im-
maculate and delicate a loveliness of
method. “ I paint the woods I saw
as a boy,” Murphy says, momentarily
retrospective, and here, for better or
INDIAN SUMMER
BY J. FRANCIS MURPIIY
IV