Osa, Arca, Artist in Oilskins: Schooner Days DCCLXXXVIII (788)

by C. H. J. Snider

FOOLS rush in where angels fear to tread, and here comes a shellback making the motions of an art critic.

Two pictures in the Ontario Society iof Artists' present exhibition — the 75th annual, which goes on tour next month - are sea life by Rowley Walter Murphy, ARCA, OSA. One is "HMS Mary Rose Fitting Out," the other "The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck, 1940." Both show that while an artist's head may be trailing clouds of glory his feet may also be firmly planted on the planks below.

This is particularly true of Murphy's work, which ranges through pencil, ink, water color, oil and stained glass, in architecture, marines, landscape and portraiture. His pictures are included in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the National Gallery at Ottawa, and the Royal Canadian Naval War Records at Ottawa; and Schooner 'Days.

IN THE BEGINNING

A boy's will is the wind's will, and the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts. Rowley Murphy's art springs from unsuspected sources, Toronto's waterfront and the winding Welland Canal of schooner days. Readers are familiar with his sympathetic depiction of lighthouses and lake schooners, which has frequently enriched these columns.

He may never have earned his living before the mast, or worked his way from forecastle to cabin in a three-'n'-after, but raffees, gafftopsail, jibs and fore-and-aft canvas hovered over his imagination like wings. He learned all about schooners from the tugs which handled them. Before he forsook the towpath of the Welland he was a good tugman, though still a boy. When fairmiles and such had to run the canals ahead of the second war winter, who so helpful as Rowley Murphy, the only artist-yachtsman of his generation who could handle a heaving line or get the all-too-short mooring wire ashore without the aid of a landing-boom?

TO EUROPE AND BACK

He received his art education at the Central Technical School and the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, and in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. There he was awarded two European traveling fellowships in 1913 and 1914, and there he also won the Toppan prize for landscape, the mural decoration prize, and the Lea prize for figure drawing which was contested by all registered art students in the United States. He is author of "An Artist With the RCN," "Painting At Sea In Wartime" and "Wrecks on the Island Shore." He has designed and executed many stained glass windows for Bryn Athyn Cathedral, north of Philadelphia (a cathedral famous in the United States, but more or less unknown in Canada), as well as several important windows in this country. He is a graduate of the teachers' training course in Hamilton, and has instructed in the Hamilton Technical School, Western Technical School in Toronto, the Ontario College of Art and the Department of Education summer courses in art at Toronto. He was winner of first prize for the best drawing by a Canadian artist, awarded by the Graphic Arts Society.

PAINTING FROM LIFE

No artist of our acquaintance is so well qualified to depict the life he so honestly paints, from actual participation in it. He can explain the way of a ship in the sea, for he has taken the ship to sea himself and brought her home again.

Murphy has been sailing actively (under sail) since 1898, in all types of yachts, and has been owner of three. He spent much time in tugs and lake freighters, etc., on the Welland Canal from 1906 to 1911. There he learned to shovel coal and run a steam engine, and how vessels are handled in locking through.

The largest vessel he sailed (under sail) was the hundred foot Halifax pilot schooner Nauphila. He rerigged the Fisher Cup winner Zoraya as a schooner and made a record passage around Toronto Island in her in 1926—one hour four minutes 38 seconds. The course is about 9 miles, and some of it is necessarily to windward.

EARLY CREW

He sailed Zoraya with his wife and baby. The baby was Leading Seaman Philip Murphy, RCN, in the World War, and Mrs. Murphy has given six years' service to the Red Cross. The family still sails together — when they get a chance. He is a member of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club. All summer the little O-boat champs restlessly in the lagoon behind his Toronto Island cottage, eager for those precious hours which her master can snatch from school rooms, for a plunge into reality— Lake Ontario in any mood.

This "practical painter" has been in two wrecks, in one of which the vessel foundered. The other was the one in which SS Sonia was wrecked in the Southern hurricane of 1937. Mr. Murphy was in a serious fire in the SS New York News in 1936 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence when the vessel narrowly escaped total loss.

In 1940-41, he was at sea in Canadian destroyers with North Atlantic convoys. He helped take Royal Canadian Navy vessels from the Great Lakes to salt water through the canals, etc., in 1941-42. He designed naval camouflage for the RCN under Admiral Jones. He was an official Naval War Records artist with the RCN from 1940 to 1944 on North Atlantic and Pacific stations, and was an instructor in ship recognition, sailing and seamanship for the RCN in 1943-44.

MAN OF HIS HANDS

When he put on naval uniform he was not content to have his buttons polished by a seagoing batman while he doodled and invited his soul. He insisted on lugging his musket with the rest of the boys on the toughest route marches, and it took all the brass hats in the Royal Canadian Navy to keep him from working winches and heaving in spring wires. He must have been a great pest to the spit and polish brigade, and they evidently took it out on him. Look at him in the uniform they allotted him, and the "studio" which was the best they could find for him—a dog-hole between piles of brick with packing box for a draughting-board! Every curve in his tense silhouette in this photograph shrieks pent-up protest against the shiny uniform shoes, the snow white shirt, the tiddley tie, instead of seaboots and dungarees—and equal disgust at the shabby, ramshackle atelier in which he was expected to turn out historic master pieces, camouflage designs, propaganda pap, and the devil knows what else. It's a wonder they didn't insist on him painting in kid gloves, as becomes a naval officer and a gentleman, even though an artist and an uncommon sailor to boot.

That he disappointed one of these expectations goes without saying. That he fulfilled the other three the pictured reproductions of some of his war work and other work amply prove.

A BIRTHDAY

Capt. John Williams, long a shining range light for Schooner Days, who died last November, would, if he had lived, be 90 years old today, for he was born March 22, 1857. Always facing forward, from lifelong habit of keeping a good lookout, Capt. Williams would have been sure to say that he was now in his 91st year. The birthday, which has been a landmark since Schooner Days began, is pleasantly brought to mind by the morning's mail, which brings a letter signed "Highland Beauty" with $15 for the British War Victims' Fund. Highland Beauty was the name of a smart little vessel owned and sailed by Capt. Williams' brother years ago. Capt. Williams and members of his family, British to the core, have been ardent supporters of the British War Victims' Fund, and as that fund is now sending food parcels to families and maintenance for abandoned or orphan Canadian children in Britain to the limit of its abilities, "Highland Beauty's" birthday reminder of an A-1 sailorman in steam and sail will go at once into action. Forty families have been fed this month, and $50,000 has been expended on ten thousand children in the last year.

The fund may also be made available for the victims of the floods and appalling weather conditions which are afflicting long-suffering Britons worse than the rain of bombs. An offer of £5,000 immediately, subject to the approval of Telegram readers and of Prime Minister Clement Attlee, has been cabled.

"The Boy Stood On The Burning Deck, 1940" ..

REDHOT forecastle head scene (centered) in this year's OSA exhibition, from such an experience as the gallant HMCS Saguenay's indicates that the right man had the brush when Rowley Murphy was at sea. To starboard an earlier oil by Murphy shows the Saguenay, torpedoed, mined, aflame, spouting oil, blood and bilge water with her deck blown over her bows, fighting her way through the Atlantic to a British dry dock. To port is another Murphy picture of the resuscitated Saguenay back on convoy.

SEAGOING ARTIST'S WARTIME NAVY STUDIO FOR HISTORIC MASTERPIECES

IT ALL BEGAN WITH SCHOONER DAYS….

Harbor sketch from Rowley Murphy's notebook thirty-six years ago, the schooner FORD RIVER towing out. She went from Lake Ontario to the service in the Great War.