Lot Essay
Murray was born in Glasgow, where he worked in business for eleven years before becoming a full-time artist. He began to exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1875, and about 1883 he moved to London, taking over Millais' old studio in Langham Chambers, Portland Place, where he remained for the rest of his life. He was to continue showing at the Academy for nearly sixty years, becoming an R.A. in 1905, receiving a knighthood in 1918, and dying at the age of eighty-four, one of the 'grand old men' of British art.
Murray found most of his early subjects in Scotland, but from the mid-1880s the southern counties of England began to claim his attention. His style broadened, detailed observation giving way to the study of atmosphere and aeriel perspective, and Constable becoming a major inspiration. His Chantrey purchase of 1903 was actually called In the Country of Constable, and was one of several pictures painted about this time at Flatford, East Bergholt, and other parts of Suffolk with which Constable is closely associated.
The present picture was one of three Hampstead views which Murray exhibited at the R.A. in 1897, the others being entitled Hampstead from the Viaduct (no.30) and Hampstead: the Firs by the "Spaniards" (no.411). These again were a homage to Constable, as many reviewers observed, or at least implied. The Times, discussing The Firs by the "Spaniards" (8 June 1897, p.11), wrote that while 'Mr Murray ... has great skill in composing a picture and a great knowledge of effect', he 'should compare the work on his tree trunks ... with that in any Turner or Constable in the National Gallery, and he will see that if painting is to live it must be more careful than this'. The Art Journal noted that 'Hampstead, which had such a fascination for Constable, has enthralled Mr David Murray, who has in the present exhibition three large views. They are marked by his well-known grasp of harmonious proportion and power of suggesting atmosphere in its subtlest passages'. The longest and most appreciative notice appeared in the Athenaeum, which included Murray among the artists considered under separate headings in the first instalment of its long review. 'The merits of Mr Murray's work', it wrote, 'are greater than they seem at first sight. Each of his four large pictures now on view is intensely fresh and like nature, but, although quite as effective and truthful as any of its forerunners, is, we are bound to say, not so searchingly finished as usual. Hampstead, long the haunt of Constable, Varley, and Linnell, has found such favour in Murray's eyes that of his four pictures this year three of them record his impressions of the beauty which has suffered so much through "improvements" and smoke ... The next work of this group is called Hampstead's Happy Heath (640), whence we look from the height over the undulating foreground; a red-coated pensioner is a telling feature of the chromatic scheme, which as a whole is very sucessful. Looking beyond these from the much-worn sward of the foreground to the distance of the smoke-laden horizon, we enjoy the harmonies of the pervading light, colour, and tone in the expansive and sunny atmosphere'.
Sir Edwin Cooper, who gave the picture to the Royal Star and Garter Home, was also the architect of the Home, which he designed free of charge. An imposing neo-Georgian building on a magnificent site overlooking the Thames at Richmond, it was planned after the First World War and opened by George V and Queen Mary on 10 July 1924. Cooper was twenty-three years younger than Murray but must have met him at the Royal Academy, of which he was elected an Associate in 1930, three years before Murray's death.
Murray found most of his early subjects in Scotland, but from the mid-1880s the southern counties of England began to claim his attention. His style broadened, detailed observation giving way to the study of atmosphere and aeriel perspective, and Constable becoming a major inspiration. His Chantrey purchase of 1903 was actually called In the Country of Constable, and was one of several pictures painted about this time at Flatford, East Bergholt, and other parts of Suffolk with which Constable is closely associated.
The present picture was one of three Hampstead views which Murray exhibited at the R.A. in 1897, the others being entitled Hampstead from the Viaduct (no.30) and Hampstead: the Firs by the "Spaniards" (no.411). These again were a homage to Constable, as many reviewers observed, or at least implied. The Times, discussing The Firs by the "Spaniards" (8 June 1897, p.11), wrote that while 'Mr Murray ... has great skill in composing a picture and a great knowledge of effect', he 'should compare the work on his tree trunks ... with that in any Turner or Constable in the National Gallery, and he will see that if painting is to live it must be more careful than this'. The Art Journal noted that 'Hampstead, which had such a fascination for Constable, has enthralled Mr David Murray, who has in the present exhibition three large views. They are marked by his well-known grasp of harmonious proportion and power of suggesting atmosphere in its subtlest passages'. The longest and most appreciative notice appeared in the Athenaeum, which included Murray among the artists considered under separate headings in the first instalment of its long review. 'The merits of Mr Murray's work', it wrote, 'are greater than they seem at first sight. Each of his four large pictures now on view is intensely fresh and like nature, but, although quite as effective and truthful as any of its forerunners, is, we are bound to say, not so searchingly finished as usual. Hampstead, long the haunt of Constable, Varley, and Linnell, has found such favour in Murray's eyes that of his four pictures this year three of them record his impressions of the beauty which has suffered so much through "improvements" and smoke ... The next work of this group is called Hampstead's Happy Heath (640), whence we look from the height over the undulating foreground; a red-coated pensioner is a telling feature of the chromatic scheme, which as a whole is very sucessful. Looking beyond these from the much-worn sward of the foreground to the distance of the smoke-laden horizon, we enjoy the harmonies of the pervading light, colour, and tone in the expansive and sunny atmosphere'.
Sir Edwin Cooper, who gave the picture to the Royal Star and Garter Home, was also the architect of the Home, which he designed free of charge. An imposing neo-Georgian building on a magnificent site overlooking the Thames at Richmond, it was planned after the First World War and opened by George V and Queen Mary on 10 July 1924. Cooper was twenty-three years younger than Murray but must have met him at the Royal Academy, of which he was elected an Associate in 1930, three years before Murray's death.