DescriptionDuring his lifetime Murphy received great acclaim and popularity for his landscapes of Indian summer. These works usually date to the first two decades of the twentieth century and were painted in thin brown and gray tones over a studiously prepared ground. Along with other American landscape painters whose barren woodlands characterized the painting of the so-called brown decades, Murphy specialized in late-autumn scenery. (1) As critic Charles Buchanan commented in 1914, Murphy may be accused of monotony, but "take him in one of his favorite subjects, Indian summer, and what a magician he is! What a wealth of retrospection he puts on a canvas! The rank, pungent odour of the cider press is in the air; you fancy you can almost hear the dead leaves rustling to the ground." (2) The New Britain painting demonstrates Murphy's talent at evoking the brooding atmosphere of an October afternoon through a limited palette of golden hues-the leaves change from orange to russet, the barren field is covered with short grass of greens and tans, the overcast sky is tinted with the orange and pink accents of approaching twilight. While Murphy's paintings were meant to evoke the atmosphere and the glowing tints of nature, he was also concerned with their overall decorative nature and used the fashionable and ubiquitous gilded frames of the period as a point of departure for the key of his golden palette. (3)

This view of a straggly grove of trees at the edge of a wood is hardly spectacular-it is, in fact, just the opposite, for Murphy celebrated "the bare open fields, seared leaves, the winding stone fence, the isolated farm," (4) producing a great number of pictures that follow this standard compositional formula. The titles of his works are rarely related to the locale depicted, which is usually the landscape near his Arkville home. Rather, Murphy recycled generic titles that, like his pictures, were meant to evoke a mood corresponding to a specific season, type of weather, or time of day. The New Britain picture, for instance, is one of at least eleven paintings that Murphy entitled "October Afternoon" between 1902 and 1917. (5)

While Murphy's paintings were hugely successful with American collectors around the turn of the century, today he and his Tonalist contemporaries have been largely forgotten. Instead, the alternate landscape style of the time, American Impressionism, with its brighter palette and sunnier disposition, has found a more enduring audience.
MAS

Bibliography
Emerson Crosby Kelly Research Materials Relating to J. Francis Murphy, 1761-1973, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Charles L. Buchanan, "J. Francis Murphy: A Master of American Landscape," "International Studio 73" (March 1921): 11-15; Eliot Clark, J. Francis Murphy (New York: privately printed, 1926); Wanda Corn, "The Color of Mood: American Tonalism", 1880-1910, exhib. cat. (San Francisco: M. H. De Young Memorial Museum and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1972); Francis Murphy, "J. Francis Murphy: The Landscape Within", exhib. cat. (Yonkers, N.Y.: Hudson River Museum, 1982).

Notes:
1 . Peter Bermingham, "American Art in the Barbizon Mood", exhib. cat. (Washington, D.C.: National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, 1975), p. 63.

2. Charles Buchanan, "J. Francis Murphy: A Master of American Landscape," "International Studio 53" (July 1914): 10.

3. Clark, "J. Francis Murphy", p. 51.

4. Eliot Clark, "Notes on the Art of J. Francis Murphy," "Art in America 6" (April 1918): 164.

5. These are listed in Emerson Crosby Kelly, "J. Francis Murphy, N.A. (1853-1921): Tints of a Vanished Past," unpublished ms., 1953, unpag., in Emerson Crosby Kelly Rearch Materials.

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