Francis Luis Mora

Forest Idyll Allegory drawing

circa 1900

Francis Luis Mora was one of the great American artists of late 19th and early 20th centuries. His illustrations were found in numerous magazines and periodicals including Harper's Weekly, Scribner's, and Century Magazine. In 1903, alongside Robert Henri, Mora taught a class at Bayport on the South Shore of New York's Long Island and another class at Good Ground in 1904, both identified as continuations of Chase's Shinnecock School. Mora also taught and exhibited extensively at the Art Students League of New York. Born in Uruguay in 1874, his family moved to America when he was a child. His father, Domingo Mora, was a well-known Spanish artist who gave his son his early artistic training. Mora also attended the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School where he studied drawing and painting under Frank Benson and Edmund Tarbell. Later he studied under H. Siddens Mowbray at the Art Students League in New York City. Following the tradition of his contemporaries and mentors, Mora traveled to Europe to study the great paintings of the Old Masters. The influence of the Spanish Masters, especially Velazquez, is evident in Mora's choice of subject matter and style throughout his career. "Perhaps it is these very conflicting conditions in the life of Mr. Luis Mora that have evolved the unusual quality of his art, an art essentially Spanish in subject and feeling and wholly modern and American in expression…(Craftsm, 17:402)." Over two hundred of Mora's sketchbooks are conserved at the Archives of American Art. Mora was also commissioned to paint the portraits of Andrew Carnegie and President Warren G. Harding, both of which hang in the White House.