Hermann Dudley Murphy: Illustration

"Harbor, San Juan" by Hermann Dudley Murphy

"With every month of work at the School of Fine Arts in Boston, Hermann Dudley Murphy felt surer that he had made no mistake in his choice. His teachers endorsed what he did, and he succeeded well enough from the first to pay his way by illustrations in papers and magazines. 

At this stage of his development it was his highest ambition to be an illustrator. One of the best things that came to him in this line was his appointment as artist to the expedition which investigated and mapped out the Nicaragua Canal. He said he did not know enough at that stage to save studies for future use, but was satisfied to do what came along in the day's work, while the experience and the life of freedom were of great value to him. 

It was a liberal education to the youth, to whom it opened so much that was new. His work brought him into prominence as an illustrator and had he still preferred that branch of artistic expression he might have had opportunities enough to continue in it."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Hermann Dudley Murphy" in "Brush and Pencil," 1899.)