{"data":{"id":"4455","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":4455,"topgoose_id":1544,"tms_id":4455,"display_name":"Gerald Murphy","sort_name":"Murphy Gerald","display_date":"1888–1964","begin_date":"1888","end_date":"1964","biography":"\u003cp\u003eThe son of a self-made American\nmillionaire, Gerald Murphy moved to Paris\nin the fall of 1921 and settled into a\nglamorous social life with other expatriate\nAmericans: the composer Cole Porter\nand writers Archibald MacLeish, Ernest\nHemingway, John Dos Passos, and\nF. Scott Fitzgerald. Enthralled by the new\nart he encountered in the city, he decided\nto become an artist, studying painting\nfor a few months with Natalia Goncharova,\nan émigré Russian artist. By 1924 his\npaintings were being included in important\nvanguard exhibitions in Paris. What\ndistinguished his art from French Purism,\nwith which it shared smooth surfaces\nand fastidiously demarcated forms\nset against abstract shapes, was his\nmagnification of commonplace products\nin the style of modern magazine\nadvertisements and billboards.\n\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNowhere is this style more evident\nthan in \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/10120\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eCocktail\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, a collage-like presentation\nof bar accessories together with a trompe-\nl’oeil cigar box and tax label, all rendered\nin flat, minute detail and arranged frontally\nor in profile. Cocktails were considered\nan American invention, and Murphy\nwas famous for serving them to his guests.\nThe components of the painting are thus\nrepresentative of Murphy’s life in France,\nwhich he described as “all somehow\nan American experience.” Murphy stopped\npainting in 1928 after one of his sons\nwas diagnosed with tuberculosis and by\n1934 was back in America running Mark\nCross, the family’s leather-goods business.\nDuring his short career he produced\nfewer than fifteen paintings, only seven\nof which survive. Not shown in the\nUnited States until 1960, they immediately\nestablished Murphy as a central figure\nof “Jazz Age” modernism.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":true,"artport":false,"biennial":false,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500011818","wikidata_id":"Q15525738","created_at":"2017-08-30T16:27:15.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-05-09T02:16:26.811-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/4455/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/4455/exhibitions"}}}}