Hermann Dudley Murphy: Onward and Upward

"Morro Castle, San Juan," 1913.
Picture and frame by Hermann Dudley Murphy.

"Just before the First World War Hermann Dudley Murphy begins to go further afield for landscape motifs, traveling to tropical countries - first to the Azores, in company with Charles Woodbury, then to Puerto Rico with Henry Ward Ranger. To the latter island he returned continually in the winter, though also later venturing to California and finally to Mexico in the thirties.

There is no doubt that the great expanses of tropic sky and sea and the sun-drenched landscapes and flowers and architecture which he now painted opened up a new vibrancy, intensity and power in Murphy's color range and also in his brush work. 

But there also seems to be a fresh clarity and strength in his work which no doubt derives at least in part from his happy second marriage to Nellie Littlehale. A curtain seems to lift from his work and more light enters in. Nellie now becomes a companion in work, making a career as a watercolorist of flowers.

Following a period of constant exhibitions before the war, Murphy's career is now fully established and highly successful and his work projects a new aura of freshness and mastery. Moreover, while Murphy throughout his career painted with great success in watercolor, in this phase of his career his production was especially brilliant and lovely.This last phase of his career, which continues to his death, brought him his greatest fame and fullest admiration, both from the public and from his fellow painters."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Hermann Dudley Murphy" by William A. Coles.)