01 Classic Works of Art, Marine Paintings - With Footnotes, #101

Henry Cruse Murphy, (American, 1886-1931)

On Deck, Treasure Island interior illustration

Oil on canvas

26 x 20 in.

Private collector

Henry Cruse Murphy, Jr., (1886-1931), was born February 26, 1886 in Brooklyn, NY. He was a member of one of Brooklyn's oldest families. In 1904 he graduated from a Brooklyn public high school, after which he attended Columbia University School of Applied Science for a degree in Electrical Engineering, Class of 1908.

Thanks to his natural drawing talent he became popular among classmates as a gifted cartoonist. He contributed illustrations to the student newspaper, of which he eventually became the art editor. Encouraged by these achievements he decided to pursue an artistic career. In September 1907 he transferred to the School of Fine Arts. 

In the summer of 1909 he moved to a working class tenement at 425 West 26th Street, and at the same time opened an art studio, where he struggled to find work as a newspaper cartoonist.

By 1910 he was living back at home with his parents in Brooklyn, while spending the warmer months working as a landscape artist with oil paints and watercolors at his family's country home in Indian Chase Park near Greenwich, CT.

On February 10, 1918 he reported for draft registration in the Great War, he was not selected for military service.

Throughout the 1920s he painted many cover illustrations for pulp magazines. In 1924 he painted the historic World War battle scene of the U.S. Army 27th Division breaking through the Hindenburg Line. The painting is in the permanent collection of the National Museum in Washington, DC.

Henry C. Murphy, Jr. died of cancer in Greenwich, CT, at the age of forty-five on January 1, 1931. More on Henry Cruse Murphy

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