Lod)i Exhibition Paintings o by J. Francis Murphy 1833 — ^92^ The MACBETH GALLERY 4^0 Fifth Avenue New York City I 9 2 I Copyrighted, iqxi WILLIAM MACBETH, Inc. FRANCIS MUKPHY AcknowledQtnent to Burton Mansfield, Esq. James G. Shepherd, Esq. Alex M. Hudnut, Esq. Mrs. Charles Stanford J. Otis Wardwell, Esq. Mrs. R. C. Vose Messrs. R. C. and N. M. Vose L. A. Lehmaier, Esq. Mr. J. G. Butler, Jr. George S. Palmer, Esq. Messrs. M. Knoedler & Co. Dr. Robert S. J. Mitcheson Mrs. William Macbeth C. Lansing Baldwin, Esq. Charles L. Buchanan, Esq. whose generous cooperation in lending their pictures has made this exhibition possible. Titles of the Pdint ings I I 1 • c~ ln«.liaii >iinin"ici" 24\^^ z \ 1 \ 1 cnihci- A lorninsj; 24X>D 3 A lorning . lh\2 2 4 Autumn 24X53 5 bummer Heat 24XU"> 6 \\ here the bunliL^ht Lingers 27X41 7 Autumn . 14X10 8 Near a Clearing 14X10 Q Showers . . 24\U^ 10 Indian bummer 1 bX 2 2 I I I he Ri\ er Bank 1 b\ 2 2 -An V /ici r ai m 25X^7 ' > Uetober Afternoon • 24\U^ 14 November urax s 2 4\U^ I S A Clearing 1 4X u) ID 10 til Barn and btubnie ibxii J 7 Indian bummer lbX2 2 i8 Upland rarm lbX22 T June 1 2X 10 20 1 he Uld harm 14x19 2 I 1 he Pool I bX 2 2 -> -» Mistv Mornin}4 lbX2 2 ^3 Approach to the ( )k I " harm 22x10 24 Upland Pastures. \ 1 oriiing 24XH^ 25 bhowers . I bx 2 2 It) Kain 14XIQ ^7 \ lorning i4Xig 28 Late Afterncx)n . 24x3b November 24x36 30 Hillside Farm 24x3b 31 The Brook 22x16 32 On the Meadow 7X12 33 Edge of a Clearing i()Xl4 APPROACH TO THE OLD FARM. No. 23 The Art of J. Francis Murphy HE plain of the present cxhiHit u)n was conccixcJ some \ears baek an^l clelmiteU JeeiJeJ upon in the fall o\ u)20. The original i^iea was soniethmt^ in the nature of a capriee on the part of a few persons who felt themseKes impelleLl to give some eoncieic form of expression to their proloimJ interest in the art of j. l^^raneis Murphy. I heir ohjecl w as to g.ithei" together, in so far as the\' w ere able, a group of j^ietures that should be to the highest elegree representative of the best of \ lurphy s art. Emphasis has been iai^i up( ni the pictures of \lurph\ *s later period, as it is more than probable that his claim to originalit\' rests uj^on the work he accomplished during the last twenty years of his life. The original plan of attempting to secure a discriminatixe rather than a comprehensixe collection of pictures has been maintained, despite the fact that Murph\ "s death, on January 30, lends to the present exhibition a lamentable and wholK unanticipated significance. Murphy attained the highest degree of distinction that can come to the artist: he was depreciated by contemi^Kirary professional opinion. The conclusixe significance of this fact will be at f)nce apparent to any one at all familiar with the history of art. (furiously enough, he succeeded in pleasing neither the radicals nor the conservatives. He was graciously disparaged by complacent mediocrities; bitterly and sometimes scurrilously assailed by intemperate persons of cheap /. Francis Murphy and facile cultivations. He was "negligible". He couldn't "draw". He was "standardized". There lingered about his work the "faintest hint of a studio gesture". This was the sort of thing that was said of one of the loveliest, most inspired and absolutely the most original painter of landscape this country has produced. It is obvious that Murphy "s case runs parallel with the records of all artists that have brought into art a new and peculiarly individual way of seeing and feeling. The charges that have been brought against Murphy — some of them utterly preposterous — are the sort of thing that has been said from time immemorial against any artist that has worked within a restricted range of expression, or has expressed himself through a sharply defined idiom. Identical instances may be cited in the cases of Grieg, Chopin, Debussy, Swinburne, Yeats. Co rot, Whistler, and a dozen others. One cannot help suspecting that professional criticism is utterly in- capable of correctly estimating original work. In fact, one is led to the belief that the critic and the artist are the last persons to appreciate the essential significance of the work of art. Possibly the explanation of this lies in the fact that the professional critic and the artist are the victims of their prepossessions: they are limited, quite unconsciously no doubt, to an apprecia- tion of those works of art that represent for them a tangible embodiment of the peculiar theories and cri- terions they have formulated. They are still obsessed by the impossible ideal of a fixed standard of artistic excellence (as though art could be prescribed), whereas The Macbeth Gallery II II IMK)!.. N... :i e\er\' sane person knows thnt noli cnn no more set arbitrary definitions upon art than \ ou can explain the mysterx' of personal magnetism. It is perfectK' apparent \\h\ \!urph\' should have proved a hard nut for stereotyped and sophisticated criticism to crack. One could, of course. hardK' expect our "modernists to consider him, for these superlative exquisites, who have transcended c)ur human frailties and sentimentalities, are implacahK oppc^sed to any art that is not exclusi\ely occult complex and fan- tastic. These persons are consistent, however one believes that their premises are false, shallow and infirm Consider, on the other hand, w hat the academic critics had to run up against when the\ found them- selves confronted by the uncongenial task f)f con- /. Francis Murphy templating a Murphy. Here was a man so peculiarly, strangely different from the sort of thing they were accustomed to that they were faced by the necessity of formulating a whole new set of criterions through which to estimate him. It was perfectly apparent to them that a Tryon, a Hassam, or an Alden Weir was a de- lightful and accomplished artist: the essential and obvious preoccupation of these painters was to achieve a decorative beauty. Murphy, to the contrary, was engaged in placing a simple statement of plain fact before us. Other painters subjected nature to exquisite re-adjustments and transpositions; to a sort of refining process, as it were, wherein nature is shown us as a decorously charming thing quite divested of its in- herent identity. Murphy took a bald, stark, actual nature and put it on canvas, retaining and revealing, with consummate and inspired felicity, its native char- acteristics. His art rose out of the soil with something about it of that peculiar quality of dry, strange pathos one finds in a song of Stephen Foster's or a poem of Robert Burns'. It was a veritable dialect of painting. It held the very bite and tang of nature. It was quite unprecedentedly real, and, as in the case of In- ness, though less comprehensively, it penetrated to the core of our recollections. The present writer has never had a doubt as to what the ultimate verdict on Murphy will be. There may always be a difference of opinion as to his point of view — this is a matter of personal taste. There can be absolutely no question as to his workmanship. It is simply incomparable. It is not too much to contend The Macbeth Gallery OCTOBER AFTERNOON. No. n that. technicalK'. Murphx was the greatest painter of landscape this or any other country has produced. I lad he come to us from abroad, heralded b\ press-agent and propaganda, he would ha\e been accepted at something like his true worth. The funLlamcntal humanness of his appeal and his dej^iorable mistake of achie\ing a commercial notoriety, deceived his critics. They did not see that back of the apparent and \ ery deceptix e simplicity of Murphy there was an impeccable and unique craftsmanship that transcended a mere obvious artifice. No (;ne has ever interpreted with so affectionate and adroit a divination the in- articulate pathos of naked and neglected areas, of desolate lands, of the wet earth, soggy and disconsolate from {"persistent rains. Compared to the sheer, stark reality of these frugal and aboriginal representations, a /. Francis Murphy Corot would seem cursi\'e and unreal, a Monet essen- tially artificial, an Alden Weir experimental and un- convincing, a Tryon plausibly and fluently insincere. But the essential and quite extraordinary significance of Murphy's art is the fact that this homely, primitive point of view is fused miraculously with a degree of sheer beauty for which, with the exception of Corot, there is no equal in all landscape painting. It is per- fectly obvious that other painters have achieved in- finitely higher reaches of imagination ; no painter repre- sents so peculiar an equilibrium maintained between an elementary and literal point of view and a decorative and classical kind of loveliness. It was Murphy's unique accomplishment to achieve an absolute realism without a loss of that mystic, indefinable quality which transfigures realism. A tree trunk of Murphy's has bulk, weight, circumference ; his foreground is solid earth. His paint is not an approximation of nature: it is nature, and yet it remains beautiful as paint. Whether in handling the black of a tangle of branches thrown against the sky, the peculiarly brownish yellows of a clump of bushes, the rank, soaking browns of a dead earth, Murphy achieves a degree of veracity positively clairvoyant in its inspired divination. Note, again, the range of his expression. Take, for instance, the glorious Indian Summer, the strange, gray, dry au- sterity of the November Morning, the gracefulness of the little green Morning. For imaginative conception, one asks where in all American landscape painting is there a more original picture than the unique Showers, a picture with a kind of Oriental grotesqueness about it almost repulsi\e at first glance. Note the large The Macbeth Gallery green picture lent by the Butler Art Institute. If this picture had been painted b\ Cezanne, we should ha\"e heard no end of talk of "organization ' (w hatever, precisely, this may mean). Painted b\ j. I rancis Murphy — ! Murphy is a peg on which one could hang an in- terminable discussion of artistic principles. This, of course, is not the place for such a discussion. Murphy's age was an age of unprecedented upheaval in all branches of human thought and endeavor. It is quite possible that the standards we are accustomed to apply to the work of art are outmoded and insufficient. We can argue about this, but we can arrive at no satisfac- tory conclusion, one way or the other. All we know is that, judged by the standards that have come dow n J, Francis Murphy to us from the past. Murphy was a superlatively beau- tiful painter. In that remarkable development of his art that dates from about iqoi to a few days before his death, he supplies us with a unique something at once so strangely lovely and deceptively simple that it is safe to say we have not yet scratched the surface of its significance. The present writer is free to confess that, for him, Murphy's art is unique. No one of our time, with the possible exception of Emil Carlsen in his later still life work, exhibits quite so magical a manipulation of material. To those susceptible to the peculiar, ineffable penetrativeness of its appeal, its charm eludes definition. Persons of shallow and sophisticated sensi- bilities will continue to ignore and disparage its re- ticent exquisiteness. We need not take them seriously. The authentic capacity for artistic appreciation reveals itself in the ability to estimate, each for its particular degree of intrinsic significance, things widely, even totally, dissimilar. Limitations are not deficiencies, and Murphy's alleged limitations are no more clearly marked than are the limitations of Corot, Daubigny, Mauve, Tryon (note the latter's inevitable middle -distance line of trees), Dewing and a dozen others. The absurd habit still persists of emphasizing what an artist is not: it would appear the more equitable attitude to accept, whole-heartedly, whatever degree of peculiar charm each individual artist has to give us. Perhaps one wishes, sometimes, that Murphy's inclination towards the evolving of new and fanciful patterns had been more assiduously cultivated; that he had been a trifle more \, The Macbeth Gallery SHOWERS. No. 25 consciously desirous of achieving a novelty of design. But when all is said and done, one knows that his reputation will grow incalculably with the years, for his work stands four-square upon the impregnable founda- tion of a human expression, nobly plain, transfigured by that kind of clairvoyant, magic touch which we recognize as of direct kinship with the royal line of the world's wonder-workers of lovely things. He has been elected, as every authentic artist is, by the People; the People, who have stubbornly refused to be distracted or demoralized by the spurious and sophistical ex- tremities of ''modernism". One does not doubt that his position is secure so long as human nature retains its capacity for the appreciation of fundamental truth and genuine beauty.