Those who knew him say Stan Murphy put a lot more than paint on canvas. A self-taught painter who was a famously quirky perfectionist, and worked as hard as the Island tradesmen and fishermen he liked to paint, Mr. Murphy captured the essence of Martha’s Vineyard in his work—its people, its places and its feeling.
A retrospective of the late painter opens at Featherstone Center for the Arts this weekend. It will include some of Mr. Murphy’s iconic portraits and some which haven’t been widely displayed. It’s a sure bet the show will include some stone walls. The opening reception is Sunday, June 26, from 4 to 6 p.m.
“Stan liked to look at stone walls,” said Rez Williams, an accomplished painter who thinks of Mr. Murphy as a mentor to himself and his wife, Lucy Mitchell, also a visual artist. “Not the kind you see today, surrounding trophy houses, where the stones are all shipped in. Stone walls were built by people who had to lift them, or with oxen who had to help move them. The stones take their position in place different than modern stone walls. There’s poetry there.”
Mr. Murphy, who died in 2003, left an enduring legacy of work that showcased his chosen home, especially its local characters. His portraits included working men and women from old Island families, as well as distinguished academics visiting for the summer.
“He lived a life people think you’re supposed to live, as an artist,” said Allen Whiting, another painter who considered Mr. Murphy a mentor and friend. “He made it the focus of his life. He would see the carpenters and fishermen going by at 5:30 a.m. He told me ‘if I don’t make it, I don’t want it to be because I didn’t work as hard as the next guy.’ Stan’s always with me when I’m lazy. He sits on my shoulder if I feel I don’t work as hard as I should.”
The artist’s pursuit of perfection was legendary. Chris Morse, owner of the Granary Gallery in West Tisbury, has a personal collection of Mr. Murphy’s paintings which he will loan to the Featherstone show.
“He would drive down to a museum in New York, and just study how one of the great portrait artists had done an eyelid, or how a hand held something. Then he would come back and apply that to the painting he was working on. He was an unbelievable student of his craft.”
Student and teacher were the same person. Mr. Murphy had some training in graphic arts, but for the most part, he taught himself how to paint. Later in his life, he was a seminal influence on other Island painters.
“Everybody looked up to him,” Mr. Whiting said. “It was fun for us young artists to know him. He wasn’t going to suffer any fools, so when you made it into his circle artistically, you had the right to know he believed in you.”
“He was very proper, he didn’t self-promote,” said Mr. Williams. “It was just his persona, his being, that taught me a lot about how to be an artist. Not to make product, necessarily, but to make art.”
Among the paintings that will hang in the Featherstone gallery is a rendering of the Island home near Lake Tashmoo, once owned by the actor Katharine Cornell. It is considered his first commercial sale. As the story goes, Mr. Murphy was randomly knocking on doors, hoping to make some money by painting someone’s house. He was rejected at every door, until he was greeted by Ms. Cornell, who accepted his offer. They became friends, and she was a lifelong benefactor. In her will, Ms. Cornell left funds to renovate Tisbury town hall, and establish the second-floor theatre named after her. She also left funds for Mr. Murphy to paint expansive murals on all four walls. Depicting Island life in all four seasons, the murals are a treasured piece of Vineyard history.
There is still a strong market for Mr. Murphy’s work, mostly among Island art enthusiasts. Smaller works have sold recently in the neighborhood of $2,000, according to Mr. Morse. More well-known pieces have sold for more than $100,000, he said.
A number of paintings will be on loan from the Martha’s Vineyard Museum collection. Others will come from Mr. Murphy’s family.
The guest curator for the Featherstone retrospective is painter Nancy Kingsley, who is an admirer and also a student of his work.
“What made him good was he had a strong attachment to his subject matter, and love of his subject matter,” Ms. Kingsley said. “He could get it down with paint.”
The retrospective will represent a wide variety of Mr. Murphy’s style in portraits, landscapes and still life, which evolved over more than five decades of living and painting on the Island.
“He made his choices, like a lot of us did, to live on Martha’s Vineyard, and not on Houston street [New York],” said Mr. Whiting. “It was quite a powerful artistic experience, watching all these paintings emerge one at a time.”
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