Samuel Murray

Samuel Aloysius Murray (1869 – November 3, 1941) was an American sculptor, educator, and protégé of the painter Thomas Eakins.

Murray, the 11th of 12 children of an Irish stone cutter and his wife, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and educated in the city's parochial schools. In September 1886, at age 17, he entered the seven-month-old Art Students' League of Philadelphia, where he studied under Eakins. He soon became a favored student, then Eakins's assistant, and was listed as an instructor in 1892. The two artists shared a studio at 1330 Chestnut Street from 1892 to about 1900, sometimes painting and sculpting from the same model.

The pair spent a great deal of time together: working side by side, bicycling around Philadelphia, attending boxing matches, fishing in Gloucester, New Jersey, and taking trips and vacations together. Murray accompanied Eakins on visits to Walt Whitman in Camden, New Jersey (across the Delaware River from Philadelphia), and, following the poet's death on March 26, 1892, they cast a plaster death mask of his face. Murray introduced Eakins to Catholic priests at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, and Eakins painted portraits of a number of them.

Eakins painted an 1889 portrait of Murray, and featured him in a number of paintings and photographs. Murray modeled at least three figures of Eakins. The exact nature of their relationship is the subject of speculation, but Murray remained a lifelong friend to Eakins, and helped care for the disabled painter in his old age.

^{Philadelphia Museum of Art}
Home Ranch by Eakins (1888). Franklin L. Schenck is the cowboy; Murray is the man at right.

^{Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst.}
Portrait of Samuel Murray by Eakins (1889).

Samuel Murray, nude, in Eakins's 1330 Chestnut Street studio (circa 1892). Murray's bust of Walt Whitman (1892) is on the shelf above.

^{Addison Gallery of American Art}
Salutat by Eakins (1898). Murray is the man applauding at far right, with Benjamin Eakins (the artist's father) behind him.

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