A Retrospective on Stan Murphy, Martha's Vineyard Regionalist Painter
The Granary Gallery has worked more than a decade to collect 35 examples of Stan Murphy's work, ranging from still life and landscapes, to intimate portraits. This specially curated collection highlights the way Murphy captured the essence of a person, the luminosity of a floral arrangement, or the grandeur of the Vineyard through the seasons, for more than 50 years. Called the “Dean of Martha’s Vineyard Artists”, patrons admired Stan's work because they valued his vision of their world.
“As Argenteuil belongs to Monet, Martha’s Vineyard belongs to Stan Murphy"
Born in 1922 in St. Paul, Minnesota, moved to Buffalo, NY in 1932 and to Baltimore in 1934 where he lived until enlisting in the service in 1942. Murphy moved with his wife and first child to Martha’s Vineyard in 1948 where he lived until his death in 2003.
He attended Loyola College in Baltimore 1940, Maryland Institute of Fine and Practical Arts; Johns Hopkins 1941; 1942-1946 served in U.S. Army; enrolled in Art Students League, New York City, 1946-1948. His formal art training was incomplete, and he was mainly a self-taught portraitist.
While studying in post World War II New York City, the Artist was aware of the Abstract Expressionism movement, but he rejected the modern nonrepresentational art form of post war New York and embraced Flemish representational art of the 1600’s.
While starting his artistic career as a lithographer using a limestone press, he moved on to oils. Upon moving to Martha’s Vineyard, summer home of his wife’s family, Stan decided that there was sufficient subject matter there for him to paint for the rest of his life.
Thomas Hart Benton, a summer resident of the Vineyard, was a friend of Murphy’s, and theirs was a relationship of the older artist encouraging the younger. The same could be said about the relationship Stan had with Island artists Allen Whiting, Rez Williams and other aspiring artists, encouragement not emulation.
Of the hundreds of paintings he produced, most are still in private hands. The only institution actively collecting his work is the Martha’s Vineyard Museum. Even while the artist was alive, the Granary Gallery provided secondary markets for Stan’s work, and remains an active dealer of Murphy’s work.
Nudes
Stan Murphy's nude paintings and drawings depict women forever young. They range from early works of thick impasto and inventive color patterns to smoother, more modeled, thinly painted figures on glowing surfaces. The nudes created using pencil are carefully rendered and polished, coupling cross-hatching techniques with simple lines.
Nude, June 22, 1967, 22" x 17"
Flora
Stan found that the small paintings of flowers were very salable. Echoing the Flemish floral paintings, Murphy’s delicate rendering of flowers were small jewels in their clarity are precisely painted. The ink bottle, vase or lusterware pitcher that held the flowers also were treated with care and finesse. Many of the floral pieces were paintings of the flower arrangements made by his wife, Polly, using her own garden for the arrangements, many of which were great creations in their own right.
Flower Bouquet, 1972, 12" x 9"
Landscapes
His landscapes were vistas of fields, woods and water capturing the wide variety of topography on the Vineyard. Frequently the paintings were of the Island in winter when the contrast between snow covered fields or moor and water was the most stark. Murphy created spring landscapes with the blooms of daffodils, beach plum or fields of new grass. He often detailed the lichen growing on the stone walls which crisscross the landscape up-island. In his landscapes, he captured Island in all seasons.
Winter Field, West Tisbury, 1967, 48" x 63"
Portraits of Vineyard Icons
Stan Murphy painted the men who worked the land and the sea. He painted not just a likeness, but he captured the essence of the individual. Frequently the subject of his non-commissioned portraits were men who worked out of doors, fishermen and farmers. Often the sitter would get the study in exchange for being Stan’s subject, he selected his subjects partly by a desire to get to know the person.
Chris Murphy as a Boy, 19" x 15"
