GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Gerald Murphy was born in 1888 in Boston. His father was the owner of the Mark Cross company—a successful luxury goods store—and he tried, unsuccessfully, to interest Gerald in the family business.
Murphy went to college at Yale where he was widely revered by his fellow classmates. He was elected into the top fraternity, tapped for Skull and Bones (a secret collegiate society), made manager of the glee club and chairman of the dance committee, and voted best dressed man in the class of 1911. However, Murphy later claimed the competitive atmosphere of Yale was stifling. “I was very unhappy there,” he said. “You always felt that you were expected to make good in some form of extracurricular activity, and there was such constant pressure on you that you couldn’t make a stand against it—I couldn’t, anyway.”
In 1915, after graduating from college, Gerald met and married Sara Wiborg, the daughter of an Illinois shipping magnate. The Murphys soon grew disaffected with the political and social atmosphere in America during Prohibition. Gerald Murphy said of it, “You had the feeling that the bluenoses were in the saddle over here, and that a government that could pass the Eighteenth Amendment could, and probably would, do a lot of other things to make life in the States as stuffy and bigoted as possible.” Compounding their problems, Gerald and Sara Murphy’s parents disapproved of their marriage. Like many other Americans at this time, the Murphys decided to move to France.
After arriving in Paris in 1921, the Murphys fell in with a group of expatriate American writers who have come to be known as the “Lost Generation.” This group was closely associated with a number of visual artists such as Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, and Man Ray. Though Gerald Murphy had always expressed an interest in art, he first decided to start painting after one of his walks in Paris brought him to the window of the Rosenberg Gallery. It was there that he saw, for the first time, paintings by Georges Braque, Picasso, and Gris. Murphy said of the experience, “I was astounded. My reaction to the color and form was immediate; to me there was something in these paintings that was instantly sympathetic and comprehensible and fresh and new. I said to Sara, ‘If that’s painting, it’s what I want to do.’" Murphy pursued his own art training and became a student of Natalia Goncharova, a Russian artist who had come to Paris with Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. He first displayed his work at the 1923 Salon des Indépendents, an important Parisian avant-garde art exhibition. Murphy painted slowly, producing only a small number of works but received complimentary reviews from his contemporaries. Léger announced that Murphy was the only American painter in Paris (meaning the only one of any importance).
During their time in Paris and Villa America (the name of their home in the French Riviera), Gerald and Sara Murphy hosted lavish parties for many of the most important European and American intellectuals, writers, and artists. The couple was famously used as models for characters in several writings. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel Tender Is the Night, a fictionalized account of life in the wealthy coastal region, uses the Murphys as the inspiration for his main characters, Dick and Nicole Diver; Archibald MacLeish based the main characters of his Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning play J.B. on Gerald and Sara Murphy; and the Murphys play significant roles in Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast.
By 1929 Gerald Murphy’s attention was increasingly taken up by his two young sons, Patrick and Baoth, both of whom grew ill and died within two years of each other of unrelated illnesses. At this time, he also began running his father’s struggling company, Mark Cross. Together, the pressures of family and work caused him to stop painting altogether.
Murphy made a total of fourteen paintings during his brief painting career. Critics rediscovered him only in 1960, after his work was included in the Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts' group exhibition, American Genius in Review: I (May 11-June 19, 1960). Murphy died in East Hampton in 1964. Since then, several biographies, including Calvin Tompkins’ Living Well Is the Best Revenge, have shed light on his time in France and his artistic legacy.
Adapted from
- "Gerald Murphy, Watch," DMA Connect, Dallas Museum of Art, 2012.
- "Gerald Murphy, Razor," DMA Connect, Dallas Museum of Art, 2012.
- Heather MacDonald, DMA Label copy (1963.75.FA), October 2009.
- Bonnie Pitman, ed., Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 248.
NOTES
Added artist geographies to TMS:
Cap d'Antibes
Paris
Boston
This note was tagged #routed in June 2015 and Sue's revisions (in a Word doc created by ASG) have been applied to the note as of October 2015. As of January 2017 I am adding the #draft tag to this note so that it is harvested to Google Drive. Once I am sure that all pending TMS or Piction data entry is complete, I will remove the #routed tag, add the #complete tag, and move the Google Doc to Queta's folder so that it is not re-routed to Sue.
I cataloged and completed the records in Piction including Murphy's letters and the image pulled from Wikimedia. I am removing the %PictionMW and %UMO pending tags. All revisions are complete and I am removing the routed tag and replacing with the completed tag. The GDoc has been moved to Queta's folders for review. (3/2/2017)
Removed this web resource link because NYT may restrict access based on subscription.
Dorothy Spears, "Tender is a Toast to Avatars of the Lost Generation," New York Times, June 24, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/24/arts/24spea.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
A 2015 Uncrated blog post uses a photo of Gerald and Sara Murphy from the Yale Archives but I am not sure how to locate this digital file on Piction, or where it is located, or if it is permissible to use as part of the OLC.
I used the photo of Murphys/Hemingways in Spain to illustrate Murphy biography content page. Better images available in exhibition catalogues but did not have time to get alternate portraits added to Piction.
The audio files for Making it New- Exhibition ID#- 11779
The following files were found on V/Screen but the audio was not found in Piction.
- 200- introduction
- 203= Cocktail
- 204- Watch
- 207- Razor
- 209- photos of the Murphys and friends in Paris and their home
- 212- Cubism and Braques still life
- 218- photos of Murphys southern france home and Picassos use of Sarah as a model
- 222- the Dallas Museum of Contemporary Art 1960 exhibition of Murphy, Betty Blake comments on McCarthyism.
Consolidated list of all UMOs related to Murphy (in case these can be applied in bulk to another content essay for Murphy or his works)--
11 audio files
3 video files
16 image assets
2 exhibition catalogues
13317420: UMO, 13317004: UMO, 13317156: UMO, 13317677: UMO, 13310682: UMO, 13317709: UMO, 251965344: UMO, 13310610: UMO, 264283028: UMO, 264295821: UMO, 13318167: UMO, 12936449: UMO, 13318175: UMO, 12936457: UMO, 253362685: UMO, 253365721: UMO, 253362695: UMO, 253365737: UMO, 253365754: UMO, 253362705: UMO, 253365770: UMO, 253365784: UMO, 253362715: UMO, 253365798: UMO, 253362725: UMO, 253365812: UMO, 253365826: UMO, 253362735: UMO, 253365841: UMO, 265932250: UMO, 12712873: UMO, 248086599: UMO
ASSOCIATED CONTENT CHUNKS
AUDIO ASSETS
Scott Winterrowd, "Gerald Murphy and American Brand Cubism," lecture (August 27, 2008). Draft transcript on TAZ. Audio file: gt_20080827_Gerald_Murphy_Scott_Winterrowd.mp3.
13317420: UMO; Object numbers added to Piction.
Blithe Spirits: songs, art, poetry, and letters celebrating the legacy of Sarah and Gerald Murphy; Southeastern Festival of Song. Artful Musing recordings from Arts and Letters Live events in 2008. Two recordings, object numbers added to Piction.
13317004: UMO; Object numbers added to Piction.
13317156: UMO; Object numbers added to Piction.
Keyse, gallery talk for Making it New exhibition, "Cubism 101"- object numbers added to Piction
13317677: UMO; Object numbers added to Piction.
Artists, Mentors, and Friends: Picasso, Léger, and Murphy. Gallery talk by Shannon Karol, 9/4/2013.
13310682: UMO; Object numbers added to Piction.
The Surface is Part of the Depth, Deborah Rothschild gallery talk, 9/10/2008.
13317709: UMO; Object numbers added to Piction.
Lisa Klaussmann, Arts and Letters Live lecture on her book, Villa America, 8/13/2015.
251965344: UMO; Object numbers added to Piction.
Deborah Rothschild Antenna audio tour interview for Making it New exhibition.
13310610: UMO; Object number added to Piction.
Heather MacDonald, A Question of Light tour, 5/14/2011.
264283028: UMO; Object number added to Piction.
Shannon Karol, Provocative Comparisons gallery talk, 9/21/2-11.
264295821: UMO; Object number added to Piction.
Amanda Vaill and Dorothy Kosinski, "The Great Fair: Sara and Gerald Murphy and the World of 1920s Modernism," Lecture in conjunction with Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy, June 1 - September 14, 2008. File Name- MurphyModernism. (Located on DMA Archives, Digitized Audio and Video Recordings.) Draft of transcript from "The Great Fair," (July 7, 2008) located on TAZ. Audio file: 20080724_AmandaVaill_theGreatFair.
13318167: UMO; Object number added to Piction.
VIDEO ASSETS
Linda Patterson Miller, "Gerald Murphy in Letters, Literature and Life," Lecture (Letters from the Lost Generation: Gerald and Sarah Murphy and Friends) in conjunction with Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy, June 1 - September 14, 2008. File Name- MurphyLetters. (Located on DMA Archives, Digitized Audio and Video Recordings.) Draft of transcript from "Gerald Murphy in Letters, Literature and Life," (August 15, 2008) located on TAZ. Audio file: 20080815_LindaPattersonMiller.mp3. Object numbers added to Piction.
12936449: UMO; Object number added to Piction.
13318175: UMO; Object number added to Piction.
"Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy," 2007. Video created by Williams College Museum of Art for the "Making It New" exhibition. Object numbers added to Piction.
12936457: UMO; Object number added to Piction.
IMAGE ASSETS
SIX LETTERS FROM MURPHY TO MACAGY. Three of these are double-sided and cataloged as recto/verso. The first page of each letter was scanned as a pdf. These are also duplicated as tif files. The 2nd side of the double-sided items only appears in Piction as a tif file. The object numbers for Watch and Razor have been entered in Piction.
Letter from Gerald Murphy to Douglas MacAgy; 1960-04-18; page 1 of 1
Personal stationary 'Gerald Murphy, Snedens Landing, Palisades, New York'; correspondence
Murphy-MacAgy_1960-04-18_001.pdf
253362685: UMO
Murphy-MacAgy_1960-04-18_001.tif
253365721: UMO
Letter from Gerald Murphy to Douglas MacAgy; 1960-04-26; recto of single page
Personal stationary 'Gerald Murphy, Snedens Landing, Palisades, New York'; correspondence
Murphy-MacAgy_1960-04-26.pdf
253362695: UMO
Murphy-MacAgy_1960-04-26_001.tif
253365737: UMO
Verso
Letter from Gerald Murphy to Douglas MacAgy; 1960-04-26; verso of single page
Murphy-MacAgy_1960-04-26_002.tif
253365754: UMO
Letter (postcard) from Gerald Murphy to Douglas MacAgy; 1960-04-27; verso
Postcard recto image is Juan Gris, 'Le Violin' 1916 (Basel, Kunstmuseum), Nr. 3898; correspondence
Murphy-MacAgy_1960-04-27.pdf
253362705: UMO
Murphy-MacAgy_1960-04-27_001.tif
253365770: UMO
Recto
Murphy-MacAgy_1960-04-27_002.tif
253365784: UMO
Letter from Gerald Murphy to Douglas MacAgy; 1960-08-05; page 1 of 1
Personal stationary 'Gerald Murphy, P.O. Box 1022, East Hampton, New York'; correspondence
Murphy-MacAgy_1960-08-05_001.pdf
253362715: UMO
Murphy-MacAgy_1960-08-05_001.tif
253365798: UMO
Letter from Gerald Murphy to Douglas MacAgy; 1960-09-19; recto of single page
Personal stationary 'Gerald Murphy, P.O. Box 1022, East Hampton, New York'; correspondence
Murphy-MacAgy_1960-09-19.pdf
253362725: UMO
Murphy-MacAgy_1960-09-19_001.tif
253365812: UMO
Verso
Murphy-MacAgy_1960-09-19_002.tif
253365826: UMO
Letter from Gerald Murphy to Douglas MacAgy; 1960-09-26; page 1 of 1
Personal stationary 'Gerald Murphy'; correspondence
Murphy-MacAgy_1960-09-26_001.pdf
253362735: UMO
Murphy-MacAgy_1960-09-26_001.tif
253365841: UMO
265932250: UMO. [Caption] Gerald Murphy (far left seated at table) with wife Sara Murphy, Pauline Pfeiffer, Ernest Hemingway, and Hadley Hemingway. (left to right) Source: Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston, Wikimedia Commons, accessed July 18, 2016.
WEB RESOURCES
- Gerald Murphy and Archibald MacLeish~Read about Murphy's friendship with MacLeish on Tom Jungerberg's DMAcanvas blog post (May 17, 2011).
- Literary Connections to the DMA Collection~Check out Shannon Karol's bibliophile friendly post for DMAcanvas (January 14, 2010).
- Gerald Murphy: 7 Years as a Painter~Take a look at the biography and images available on Kent Boyer's Doorknob Studio site (2013).
- V.I.B. Visit to the DMA~A blog post in honor of a visit to the DMA by Murphy's 11-month-old, great godson.
ARCHIVAL RESOURCES
American Genius in Review (exhibition id- 10999)- exh catalogue- 12712873: UMO
An American Painter in Paris: Gerald Murphy (exhibition id- 11368 )- exh catalogue- 248086599: UMO
FUN FACTS
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General Description
Gerald Murphy was born in 1888 in Boston. His father was the owner of the Mark Cross company—a successful luxury goods store—and he tried, unsuccessfully, to interest Gerald in the family business.
Murphy went to college at Yale where he was widely revered by his fellow classmates. He was elected into the top fraternity, tapped for Skull and Bones (a secret collegiate society), made manager of the glee club and chairman of the dance committee, and voted best dressed man in the class of 1911. However, Murphy later claimed the competitive atmosphere of Yale was stifling. “I was very unhappy there,” he said. “You always felt that you were expected to make good in some form of extracurricular activity, and there was such constant pressure on you that you couldn’t make a stand against it—I couldn’t, anyway.”
In 1915, after graduating from college, Gerald met and married Sara Wiborg, the daughter of an Illinois shipping magnate. The Murphys soon grew disaffected with the political and social atmosphere in America during Prohibition. Gerald Murphy said of it, “You had the feeling that the bluenoses were in the saddle over here, and that a government that could pass the Eighteenth Amendment could, and probably would, do a lot of other things to make life in the States as stuffy and bigoted as possible.” Compounding their problems, Gerald and Sara Murphy’s parents disapproved of their marriage. Like many other Americans at this time, the Murphys decided to move to France.
After arriving in Paris in 1921, the Murphys fell in with a group of expatriate American writers who have come to be known as the “Lost Generation.” This group was closely associated with a number of visual artists such as Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, and Man Ray. Though Gerald Murphy had always expressed an interest in art, he first decided to start painting after one of his walks in Paris brought him to the window of the Rosenberg Gallery. It was there that he saw, for the first time, paintings by Georges Braque, Picasso, and Gris. Murphy said of the experience, “I was astounded. My reaction to the color and form was immediate; to me there was something in these paintings that was instantly sympathetic and comprehensible and fresh and new. I said to Sara, ‘If that’s painting, it’s what I want to do.’" Murphy pursued his own art training and became a student of Natalia Goncharova, a Russian artist who had come to Paris with Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. He first displayed his work at the 1923 Salon des Indépendents, an important Parisian avant-garde art exhibition. Murphy painted slowly, producing only a small number of works but received complimentary reviews from his contemporaries. Léger announced that Murphy was the only American painter in Paris (meaning the only one of any importance).
During their time in Paris and Villa America (the name of their home in the French Riviera), Gerald and Sara Murphy hosted lavish parties for many of the most important European and American intellectuals, writers, and artists. The couple was famously used as models for characters in several writings. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel Tender Is the Night, a fictionalized account of life in the wealthy coastal region, uses the Murphys as the inspiration for his main characters, Dick and Nicole Diver; Archibald MacLeish based the main characters of his Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning play J.B. on Gerald and Sara Murphy; and the Murphys play significant roles in Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast.
By 1929 Gerald Murphy’s attention was increasingly taken up by his two young sons, Patrick and Baoth, both of whom grew ill and died within two years of each other of unrelated illnesses. At this time, he also began running his father’s struggling company, Mark Cross. Together, the pressures of family and work caused him to stop painting altogether.
Murphy made a total of fourteen paintings during his brief painting career. Critics rediscovered him only in 1960, after his work was included in the Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts' group exhibition, American Genius in Review: I (May 11-June 19, 1960). Murphy died in East Hampton in 1964. Since then, several biographies, including Calvin Tompkins’ Living Well Is the Best Revenge, have shed light on his time in France and his artistic legacy.
Adapted from
- "Gerald Murphy, Watch," DMA Connect, Dallas Museum of Art, 2012.
- "Gerald Murphy, Razor," DMA Connect, Dallas Museum of Art, 2012.
- Heather MacDonald, DMA Label copy (1963.75.FA), October 2009.
- Bonnie Pitman, ed., Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 248.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
American Genius in Review (exhibition id- 10999)- exh catalogue- 12712873: UMO
An American Painter in Paris: Gerald Murphy (exhibition id- 11368 )- exh catalogue- 248086599: UMO
Web Resources
- Gerald Murphy and Archibald MacLeish~Read about Murphy's friendship with MacLeish on Tom Jungerberg's DMAcanvas blog post (May 17, 2011).
- Literary Connections to the DMA Collection~Check out Shannon Karol's bibliophile friendly post for DMAcanvas (January 14, 2010).
- Gerald Murphy: 7 Years as a Painter~Take a look at the biography and images available on Kent Boyer's Doorknob Studio site (2013).
- V.I.B. Visit to the DMA~A blog post in honor of a visit to the DMA by Murphy's 11-month-old, great godson.
Notes
Added artist geographies to TMS:
Cap d'Antibes
Paris
Boston
This note was tagged #routed in June 2015 and Sue's revisions (in a Word doc created by ASG) have been applied to the note as of October 2015. As of January 2017 I am adding the #draft tag to this note so that it is harvested to Google Drive. Once I am sure that all pending TMS or Piction data entry is complete, I will remove the #routed tag, add the #complete tag, and move the Google Doc to Queta's folder so that it is not re-routed to Sue.
I cataloged and completed the records in Piction including Murphy's letters and the image pulled from Wikimedia. I am removing the %PictionMW and %UMO pending tags. All revisions are complete and I am removing the routed tag and replacing with the completed tag. The GDoc has been moved to Queta's folders for review. (3/2/2017)
Removed this web resource link because NYT may restrict access based on subscription.
Dorothy Spears, "Tender is a Toast to Avatars of the Lost Generation," New York Times, June 24, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/24/arts/24spea.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
A 2015 Uncrated blog post uses a photo of Gerald and Sara Murphy from the Yale Archives but I am not sure how to locate this digital file on Piction, or where it is located, or if it is permissible to use as part of the OLC.
I used the photo of Murphys/Hemingways in Spain to illustrate Murphy biography content page. Better images available in exhibition catalogues but did not have time to get alternate portraits added to Piction.
The audio files for Making it New- Exhibition ID#- 11779
The following files were found on V/Screen but the audio was not found in Piction.
- 200- introduction
- 203= Cocktail
- 204- Watch
- 207- Razor
- 209- photos of the Murphys and friends in Paris and their home
- 212- Cubism and Braques still life
- 218- photos of Murphys southern france home and Picassos use of Sarah as a model
- 222- the Dallas Museum of Contemporary Art 1960 exhibition of Murphy, Betty Blake comments on McCarthyism.
Consolidated list of all UMOs related to Murphy (in case these can be applied in bulk to another content essay for Murphy or his works)--
11 audio files
3 video files
16 image assets
2 exhibition catalogues
13317420: UMO, 13317004: UMO, 13317156: UMO, 13317677: UMO, 13310682: UMO, 13317709: UMO, 251965344: UMO, 13310610: UMO, 264283028: UMO, 264295821: UMO, 13318167: UMO, 12936449: UMO, 13318175: UMO, 12936457: UMO, 253362685: UMO, 253365721: UMO, 253362695: UMO, 253365737: UMO, 253365754: UMO, 253362705: UMO, 253365770: UMO, 253365784: UMO, 253362715: UMO, 253365798: UMO, 253362725: UMO, 253365812: UMO, 253365826: UMO, 253362735: UMO, 253365841: UMO, 265932250: UMO, 12712873: UMO, 248086599: UMO
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artists_and_designers-0260.xml.nores