John Francis Murphy"The Low Lands"1900
1900
About the Item
- Creator:John Francis Murphy (1853-1921, American)
- Creation Year:1900
- Dimensions:Height: 25 in (63.5 cm)Width: 20 in (50.8 cm)Depth: 3 in (7.62 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Lambertville, NJ
- Reference Number:
John Francis Murphy
Not one for dramatic statements and bold colors, John Francis Murphy preferred to use natural, muted tones in his warm, lyrical depictions of tree-lined country roads and mossy-green pastures. While the likes of George Inness as well as the Hudson River School informed the prolific American landscape painter's early pieces, the loose brushstrokes that define his later work owe to the influence of the French artists of the Barbizon School.
Murphy was born in Oswego, New York — a small town adjacent to Lake Ontario. In his late teens, he left New York and headed to Chicago, where he painted billboards and theater sets. His job in Chicago didn't last long, and Murphy soon found himself back east. He spent several summers teaching in Orange, New Jersey, while also operating out of an art studio in New York City that he opened in 1875.
While he shifted from painting rural New Jersey to depicting the mountains of southeastern New York State — and worked initially with watercolors before focusing solely on oil painting — Murphy remained a landscape painter throughout every phase of his career and he would eventually emerge as a leading figure of the American Tonalists. The primarily self-taught Murphy conveyed tranquility and stillness in his evocative paintings of farms, wooded scenes and mountains, celebrating life beyond the frenzied hustle and bustle of metropolitan areas.
Though most found him to be friendly and approachable, Murphy often preferred to work in seclusion, away from the distraction of others. He married painter Adah Clifford Smith in 1883 and the pair visited France toward the end of the decade. In 1887, he built a studio in Arkville, New York. He lived there and painted the Catskill Mountains throughout the summer and fall seasons that year and during those that followed, returning to Manhattan periodically to show his work.
A painting of Murphy’s appeared in the annual exhibition staged by the National Academy of Design, in New York City, in 1876. He earned comparisons to celebrated French painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and the numerous prizes he was awarded over the course of his career include those won at Chicago's World’s Columbian Expo in 1893, the American Watercolor Society in 1894 and San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Expo in 1915. Murphy’s works are held in collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and elsewhere.
Find original John Francis Murphy paintings on 1stDibs.
- ShippingRetrieving quote...Ships From: Lambertville, NJ
- Return PolicyThis item cannot be returned.
- "Landscape with Farm"By John Francis MurphyLocated in Lambertville, NJJim’s of Lambertville is proud to offer this artwork by: John Francis Murphy (1853 - 1921) John Francis Murphy is increasingly recognized today as one of the leading American Tona...Category
1890s Tonalist Landscape Paintings
MaterialsOil, Canvas
- "Fall Landscape"By John Francis MurphyLocated in Lambertville, NJJim’s of Lambertville is proud to offer this artwork by: John Francis Murphy (1853 - 1921) John Francis Murphy is increasingly recognized today as one of the leading American Tonal...Category
Early 1900s Tonalist Landscape Paintings
MaterialsOil, Canvas
- "An Old Clearing"By John Francis MurphyLocated in Lambertville, NJJim’s of Lambertville is proud to offer this artwork. Signed and dated lower left. John Francis Murphy (1853 - 1921) John Francis Murphy is increasingly recognized today as one o...Category
1910s Tonalist Landscape Paintings
MaterialsCanvas, Oil
- "Birches"By John Francis MurphyLocated in Lambertville, NJJim’s of Lambertville is proud to offer this artwork. Signed lower left. John Francis Murphy (1853 - 1921) John Francis Murphy is increasingly recognized today as one of the lead...Category
Late 19th Century Tonalist Landscape Paintings
MaterialsCanvas, Oil
- "Landscape with Trees and Pond"By John Francis MurphyLocated in Lambertville, NJJim’s of Lambertville is proud to offer this artwork. Signed and Dated Lower Left John Francis Murphy (1853 - 1921) John Francis Murphy is increasingly recognized today as one o...Category
1890s Tonalist Landscape Paintings
MaterialsOil, Canvas
- "Forest Strongholds"By John F. CarlsonLocated in Lambertville, NJSigned lower right. Complemented by a hand carved and gilt frame. Exhibited at the National Academy of Design, 1928Category
20th Century American Impressionist Landscape Paintings
MaterialsCanvas, Oil
- Indian EncampmentBy Ralph Albert BlakelockLocated in New York, NYSigned lower left in arrowhead: R.A. Blakelock (NBI-1611-II)Category
Late 19th Century Tonalist Landscape Paintings
MaterialsCanvas, Oil
- “”Sunset over the Marsh”By Albert Lorey GrollLocated in Southampton, NYOriginal oil on canvas painting of a brilliant sunset over a marsh. Signed lower right “A.L. Groll”. Condition is fair. Unlined canvas. Circa 1895. Presently unframed. Albert Gr...Category
1890s Tonalist Landscape Paintings
MaterialsCanvas, Oil
- "Mountain Labyrinths"By John F. CarlsonLocated in Lambertville, NJAshley John is proud to offer this artwork by: John Fabian Carlson (1874/75 - 1945) John F. Carlson was one of the leading American landscape p...Category
Early 20th Century Tonalist Landscape Paintings
MaterialsCanvas, Oil
- "Mount Rockwell, Glacier National Park, Montana, " Mountain Lake Landscape ViewBy Charles Warren EatonLocated in New York, NYCharles Warren Eaton (1857 – 1937) The Shadow of Mount Rockwell, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1921 Oil on canvas 20 x 24 inches Signed lower right: CHAS WARREN EATON. Provenance: The artist The Macbeth Gallery, New York Private Collection Sotheby's New York, American Art, April 14, 1989 ConocoPhillips, Houston Simpson Galleries, Houston, Fine Art & Antiques, May 18, 2019, Lot 447 Exhibited: New York, The Macbeth Gallery, Paintings of Glacier National Park by Charles Warren Eaton, December 13, 1921 - January 2, 1922, no. 2. Literature: "Two Exhibitions at Macbeth's," American Art News, New York, Vol. XX, No. 10, December 17, 1921. A contemporary critic wrote that the paintings of Charles Warren Eaton appeal to “the dreamers who find in them the undiscovered scenes in which their fancy long has dwelt.” Eaton’s contemplative landscapes exude a spiritual quality that moves the observer into a similar frame of mind. He loved to depict the ethereal light of dawn and dusk in late autumn or winter, usually without any reference to human or animal figures or buildings. These Tonalist paintings, with their subdued palette and relatively intimate scale, marked a definite break with the fading popularity of the panoramic and romantic views of the Hudson River School painters. Charles Warren Eaton was born in Albany, New York to a family of limited means. He began painting while working in a dry-goods store. At age 22, he enrolled at the National Academy of Design in New York City and then studied figure painting at the Art Students League. By 1886, he was successful enough to quit his day job and make a living as a landscape painter. That year, he traveled to Europe with fellow Tonalist painters Leonard Ochtman and Ben Foster. In France, Eaton visited popular artist’s spots such as Paris, Fontainebleau and Grez-sur-Loing, and fell in love with the loose brushwork and moody style of French Barbizon painting. Returning to the United States, Eaton fell under the spell of George Inness, the foremost exponent of Barbizon style in the United States. In 1888, Eaton settled near Inness in Bloomfield, New Jersey, where Eaton lived until his death in 1937. In this period, he painted shadowy and ambiguous landscapes inspired by rural scenery in the northeastern United States. His signature theme was a cropped view of the branches, trunks, and foliage of a pine grove silhouetted against a delicately illuminated sunset or moonlit sky. He painted this vision so often between 1900 and 1910 that he picked up the sobriquet ‘‘The Pine Tree Painter.” After 1910, Eaton responded to the popularity of Impressionism by using brighter colors and painting sunlit daytime scenes. In 1921, he was hired to paint Glacier Lake, in Glacier National Park by the Great Northern Railroad Company as part of their ‘See America First’ campaign. He produced more than 20 paintings, among the artist's last works, that now poignantly remind viewers of the vast disappearing glaciers. Eaton tended to approach this mountain scenery from an oblique vantage point; he liked to capture small episodes, showing mountaintops nearly obscured by dramatically attenuated screens of fir trees. Eaton, like many Tonalist artists of his generation such as Henry Ward Ranger, John Francis Murphy, and Charles Melville Dewey...Category
1920s Tonalist Landscape Paintings
MaterialsCanvas, Paint, Oil
- Cetaldo (Italy) In The RainBy Anna HornbyLocated in Brecon, PowysOil on canvas of a Italian Rural scene by this well known and much exhibited artist. Cetaldo In The Rain catches the atmosphere of a gentle rain on a hot summers day. Anna Hornby (1914 - 1996) studied art in Florence with landscape and flower painter Aubrey Waterfield in 1934, and later that year enrolled at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London where she studied under Francis Ernest Jackson...Category
1960s Tonalist Landscape Paintings
MaterialsOil, Canvas
- Late 19th Century Tonalist Rocky Mountain High Camp LandscapeLocated in Soquel, CAWonderful 19th Century tonalist painting of Flat Top Mountain in the Rocky Mountains by unknown artist (American, late 19th-20th Century). Unsigned. Unframed. Size: 16"H x 24"W. T...Category
Early 1900s Tonalist Landscape Paintings
MaterialsCanvas, Oil