American Furniture, Folk & Decorative Arts

‘J.R. Murray’ likely refers to John Rogers Murray, Jr. (1811-1881), a member of the illustrious Murray family, which figured prominently in the early history of New York. Murray’s great-great-grandfather, another John Murray (1691-1773) was an older brother to Robert Murray (1721-1786), a prosperous Quaker shipping tycoon who leased from the city of New York a vast tract of land between Broadway and Lexington, 30th and 38th streets, an area now known as Murray Hill. The eponymous hill central to the estate was “crowned by an ancient farm-house, built in the style of the [eighteenth-century],” and the greater Murray clan resided here in “comfortable affluence” well into the late nineteenth century. [1]

John Robert Murray (1774-1851), the father of John Murray Jr., was a New York attorney regarded as “something of a figure…politically as well as socially” by the New York elite. [2] He and his wife, Harriet, were practiced entertainers largely responsible for Murray Hill’s development as “an exclusive and fashionable neighborhood desirable for residence on account of its aristocratic seclusion.” [3] Further secluded than even the Murray Hill estate, but presumably held in comparable regard in terms of its social cachet, was another rustic home retained by the Murray family at least by 1852, which bordered the Genesee River in Mount Morris, Livingston County. It was described in the New York Times on the occasion of John Murray Jr.’s death as a “magnificent domain in the Genesee Valley.” [4] Census records from 1860 value Murray’s real estate holdings in Mount Morris at $200,000, the equivalent of $7.2 million today.

Regarding the Ogden gardens and residence, there were many Ogdens living in both Livingston and Monroe counties during the nineteenth century, but no parcels of land along the Genesee River are identified to anyone by that name. However, within the Murray family, the aunt of John Murray, Jr., Susan (1771-1845), married real estate mogul William Ogden (1766-1825), an intimate associate of John Murray, Sr. The Ogden couple had three daughters, all of whom married, but Susan Ogden outlived her husband by twenty years, so it is possible that she is the “Miss Ogden” from the drawings and kept a small home on her nephew’s property in Mount Morris.

Given the chronology of the Murray family, these watercolors were likely executed during the 1840s or early 1850s, during the artist’s visit to the Murray farm. The artist may have been a family friend from New York City, who took advantage of an invitation to stay at the farm during an era of heightened tourist interest in Niagara Falls and the surrounding counties. Please see lots 57 and 59 for contemporaneous depictions of the Falls and other landscape views from related New York locales.

[1] “An Old New-York Family, Death of John R. Murray at Mount Morris Yesterday.” New York Times, November 2, 1881.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.