SÉAMUS MURPHY (1907-1975), SCULPTOR

ed. Peter Murray

intros by Barry Flanagan, Máirín Quill; essays by Orla Murphy, Séamus Murphy, Peter Murray, Gearóid Ó Crualaoich, Ken Thompson, Ann Wilson 

ISBN 978 0948037 504      296 pages (hardback)      27x23.5cm      635 illus    index

This is a beautiful and lavishly illustrated large-format book on Séamus Murphy, stonecarver, letterer and sculpture-portraitist of exceptional skill. Gathered together in this book is a huge selection of his work across all his fields of expertise. It is, without doubt, the definitive monograph on this major 20th-century sculptor. 

EXTRACTS

"From the mid-1940s until his death in 1975, the stonecarver, letterer and sculpture portraitist Séamus Murphy (1907-1975) held a unique position in the Irish art world. Apart from just one year’s study in Paris, in 1932, Murphy, who began his career as an apprentice stonecarver, spent his entire life in Cork, but over four decades he transformed himself effectively into an artist of state. His portraits of political leaders include all five presidents who held office during his lifetime – Douglas Hyde, Eamon de Valera, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, Seán T O’Kelly and Erskine Childers – as well as portraits of heroes of the struggle for independence such as Constance Markievicz, Michael Collins and Tom Barry. Among the more recent political leaders he sculpted were Jack Lynch, Seán Lemass and Peter Barry. He also sculpted religious and cultural figures as diverse as Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, John Montague, Seán Ó Faoláin and Frank O’Connor.
         Yet, while his portraits are an iconic, and occasionally ironic, record of the people who shaped modern Ireland, this artist is held by many to have excelled not as a portraitist, but as letterer, stonecarver and designer of monuments, whose gravestones and inscriptions can be found at many locations in Ireland. He was also an outstanding creator of religious sculptures, with his major work being perhaps his least known – a set of twelve life-sized apostles carved in 1948 for the exterior façade of the Church of St Brighid at Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco. The Apostles’ faces, according to legend, were based on leaders of the 1916 Rising, although, in truth, it seems many were based on friends of the artist, such as ‘The Tailor’. With typical Murphy humour, the face of Eamon de Valera was used to represent Doubting Thomas.
         Murphy’s true position in relation to Irish stone sculpture of the twentieth century has never been fully appreciated or evaluated until now, with the publication of this book.

— from the essay by Peter Murray