By John Francis Murphy
Located in New York, NY
John Francis Murphy (1853 - 1921)
Saratoga, 1876
Graphite on paper
Sight 8 3/4 x 10 1/2 inches
Titled and dated to lower right
Provenance:
Babcock Galleries, New York
Spanierman Gallery, New York
In his lifetime, John Francis Murphy (1853-1921) was known as “the American Corot.” He was renowned for his small, intimate views of nature, especially barren fields and farms, bare trees, and lonely marshland. More than a century later, the power of Murphy’s landscapes has not waned. One contemporary critic wrote, “It was Murphy’s unique accomplishment to achieve an absolute realism without a loss of that mystic, indefinable quality which transfigures realism.”
John Francis Murphy was born at Oswego, NY in 1853 but his family moved to Chicago in 1868 where he worked painting theater sets. Murphy was basically a self-taught artist; his only formal training was a few weeks of instruction at the Chicago Academy of Design.
In 1875, Murphy moved from Chicago to New York, eventually rooming with the painters Dennis Bunker and Bruce Crane above a bakery shop. Murphy’s early work was typical of the Hudson River school but he soon fell under the sway of the loose brushwork and moody style of French Barbizon painting...
Category
1870s Tonalist Landscape Drawings and Watercolors