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Indian Summer
J. Francis Murphy (born Oswego, NY 1853-died New York City 1921)
1903
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 16 1/4 x 22 in. (41.2 x 56.0 cm)
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
J. Francis Murphy created intimate landscape scenes that were painstakingly produced. His process required applying one overall wash of paint to the canvas while he was outside so that he could capture the dominant colors of the landscape. He would let the canvas dry for up to a year before completing the painting in his studio. With its spindly trees, soft yellow-green fields and sweeping clouds, Indian Summer conjures the hazy quality of a memory or dream. (Burke, “J. Francis Murphy,” American Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. III, 1980)
