Hermann Dudley Murphy: An Introduction

"Peony and Kwannon" by Hermann Dudley Murphy

"Hermann Dudley Murphy, one of the major figures of the golden age of the Boston School of painting, was but five years younger than Edmund Tarbell and Frank Benson and two years older than William Paxton. Like them he was one of the most successful and highly esteemed American painters of the first decades of the twentieth century. In addition, through his framing reforms, he exerted an enormous salutary influence on the very look and presentation of American pictures. 

He was born in Marlborough, Massachusetts, on August 25, 1867. His father, who came from Cork, Ireland, was a shoe manufacturer, and his mother was a descendent of Governor Dudley of New Hampshire. When Hermann was sixteen he made up his mind that he would be an artist. It was the only thing he wanted to be or felt that he could be, and this he told his parents.

At the age of sixteen Hermann entered the Boston Museum School, then in the first decade of its existence. Under the direction of Otto Grundmann, it was yet to acquire the strong Impressionist orientation that came in the nineties when Edmund Tarbell and Frank Benson moved into leading positions on the staff. The curriculum included exercises in drawing from memory and in composition based on assigned subjects, and studies from the draped figure. In color too, Grundmann, who had studied in Antwerp with Baron Leys, brought a Flemish sensitivity of beautiful pigments to his Boston pupils and no doubt also a reverence for the exquisite color harmonies of the Belgian painter, Alfred Stevens, who was so much admired both by the Boston painters and by Whistler. Certainly, then Murphy could have acquired a strong sensitivity to color and design in painting."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Hermann Dudley Murphy" by William A. Coles and "Hermann Dudley Murphy" from "Brush and Pencil," vol. 5. With thanks to Rehs Gallery for photo of above painting.)