Untitled (Scene at Arkville)

After the Civil War, many American artists studied in Europe and began to paint works influenced by the Barbizon style. These French artists worked on a more intimate scale, creating romantic, pastoral landscapes. Murphy toured France in 1886 and developed a personal, poetic response to nature, referred to as Tonalism. Arkville is in the Catskills, but Murphy's aesthetic is quite different from Hudson River School artists, who painted the same areas with more detail and specificity.