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$30,000.00
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8.87500
Hermann Dudley Murphy
(1867 - 1945)
Peony and Kwannon
Oil on canvas
30 x 24 inches
Framed dimensions: 34.125 x 28.125 inches
Signed; also signed, titled and dated '1931' on the reverse
Notes
Peony and Kwannon is dated 1931 and represents Murphy’s later work. Between the 1920s and the 1940s, he abandoned popular Impressionist subjects in favor of simple floral still-lifes. In Murphy’s painting, the term ‘Kwannon’ refers to the figure on the textile in the background, more commonly known as Guanyin in Chinese. Guanyin is the figure in Buddhism and Chinese folk religion associated with compassion and mercy. In the painting, we see Guanyin dressed in white robes that are open at the chest. In Chinese tradition, Guanyin is female but is often seen with open robes to symbolize their androgyny, representing that compassion and mercy reside in all people. She holds a vase in one hand and carries a willow branch in the other. The vase holds water, symbolizing purity and life, while the branch sprinkles it, administering it to devotees. However, the willow branch also represents adaptability since willow is a flexible word that bends easily without breaking. The painting’s symbolism becomes more complex when you see Guanyin’s relationship to the other subject: the white peony flowers. The flowers and the textile form two sides of the same concept. The peonies represent natural beauty, while Guanyin represents mercy and compassion, or elements of inner human beauty.
Peony and Kwannon, however, may reference a Buddhist legend. In one popular story, Guanyin was a princess sentenced to death by her father for refusing to marry the man he had picked for her. After she was executed, she arrived in the afterlife, and immediately, flowers began to sprout from the ashes at her feet. Therefore, Murphy’s placement of the flowers in relation to Guanyin is almost like she is bringing them into being with a wave of her willow branch, not unlike how she turned hell into paradise.
BIOGRAPHY
Hermann Dudley Murphy was an American painter from Massachusetts. At 19, he attended the Boston Museum school, where he studied under American and European instructors. The most influential of these teachers was Edmund Tarbell. Tarbell, his colleagues, and students like Joseph DeCamp, William McGregor Paxton, Frank Weston Benson, and Gretchen Woodman Rogers formed the basis of the American Impressionist Boston School. After working as an illustrator for a time, Murphy followed in the footsteps of some of his teachers and traveled to Paris to study at the Académie Julian. He lived and studied in Paris for five years, occasionally exhibiting at the Salon. He also was greatly influenced by and became friends with the American painter James McNeill Whistler, who had lived and worked in Europe since before Murphy's birth. Whistler’s aestheticism served as a great influence on Murphy. However, more importantly, Whistler taught him how to make his own frames for his paintings.
Murphy and his wife Caroline returned to the United States, moving to Winchester, Massachusetts, less than 10 miles northwest of Boston. There, he mainly painted landscapes and still-lifes but was disappointed by the frames available, as many in the United States at the time were mass-produced and of poor quality. Murphy began making his own frames until, in 1903, he founded a framing business in Winchester with Charles Prendergast. They called the business the Carrig-Rohane Frame Shop, named after the town in Ireland where Murphy’s father was born. After a few years, the shop was successful enough that the pair relocated it to Boston. Carrig-Rohane is often credited with helping revive the art form of frame-making in the United States. International Studio magazine called the Carrig-Rohane Frame Shop “the first serious attempt in this country to restore the picture frame to something of its old-time honor and to introduce the spirit of individual artistic responsibility.” Murphy also became one of the first frame-makers in the United States to sign and date the back of each frame. In 1915, Murphy brought in Robert Vose to operate the business so he could devote more time to painting. He took several trips abroad, particularly to the Caribbean, which seemed to have resulted in a brighter color palette in his work. The Carrig-Rohane Frame Shop would stay in business until 1939, when the Great Depression and the new abstract styles caused demand for gilded hand-carved frames to dry up.
Despite his affiliation with the Boston school and his exhibitions at the Armory Show, by the 1920s, Murphy had abandoned modernism, focusing mainly on floral still-lifes. He often composed these paintings by placing flowers in Chinese porcelain vases while using oriental rugs and prints as backgrounds. In his last years, Murphy became a member of the National Academy of Design, the Boston Art Club, the Copley Society, the Guild of Boston Artists, the National Arts Club, the Boston Society of Watercolor Painters, the Massachusetts State Art Commission, the Painters & Sculptors Gallery Association, and the Woodstock Art Association. Between 1931 and 1937, he taught art at Harvard University. Murphy died in 1945.
