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Francis Luis Mora

Francis Luis Mora was the son of the Spanish sculptor Domingo Mora and studied under his father before attending the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School and the Art Students League. Mora was an illustrator and muralist whose work reflected a blend of Spanish and Modern American influence. By the age of 18 Mora was illustrating leading periodicals. Two years later he began exhibiting his work and in 1900 he commissioned to paint a mural for the public library in Lynn, MA. Mora also painted a mural of the Michigan State Building for the St. Louis Exposition. His paintings usually depicted leisurely life, interiors and seascapes. Mora worked in oil, watercolor, charcoal and pastel. He painted the portrait of President Warren Harding with still hangs in the White House. He had a very successful career as an artist and teacher. He taught classes at the ASL, Grand Central School of Art and the New York School of Art. Mora died in 1940.

Biography courtesy of The Caldwell Gallery, www.antiquesandfineart.com/caldwell

Francis Luis Mora was born in Montevideo, Uruguay on September 27, 1874. His father, Domingo Mora (1840- 1911), was a Spanish architectural sculptor. His mother, Laura Gaillard, was a member of the Bacardi spirits family of Santiago de Cuba. His brother was Joseph Jacinto (Jo) Mora (1876-1947), who would become a noted California artist. The Mora family's artistic lineage went back to eighteenth-century Spain.

In 1878, when Luis Mora was 3 years old, Domingo Mora was hired to work in the New York studio of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the great American sculptor. In 1880, he accepted a position as Director of Design for the A.H. White Terra Cotta Company of Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Luis Mora was raised in Perth Amboy, receiving his first art instruction from his father. He graduated from Perth Amboy High School in 1891.

F. Luis Mora entered the Boston Museum School of Fine Art in 1891. His teachers were Frank Benson and Edmund Tarbell. In 1893, Mora returned to New York to work as an illustrator and to study composition with H. Siddons Mowbray at the Art Students League.

In 1900, Francis Luis Mora married Sophia Brown Compton, daughter of the Mayor of Perth Amboy, NJ. The couple lived in New York City, and the artist also kept a studio in Perth Amboy. Luis Mora quickly became a successful figural painter, portraitist, muralist and illustrator.

His life-long artistic goal was to adapt the techniques of the Spanish Old Masters into American modern painting. Mora frequently traveled to Spain to visit his extended family, and to paint in El Museo del Prado in Madrid. His patrons for Spanish scenes were Alfred Stieglitz and William Macbeth. He had solo shows of Spanish paintings at the Macbeth Gallery, the Reichert Gallery, and the Thompson Gallery.

In 1904, Mora was elected an Associate at the National Academy of Design, and became a full member in 1906. He was the first Hispanic to be elected to the NAD, and he became an exhibition jury member in 1907. Mora was also a member of The National Arts Club, The Art Students League, The Salmagundi Club, The Pen and Brush Club, The Architectural League, The American Watercolor Society, and other art societies.

Mora won three medals at National Academy competitions, and he also won medals at the St. Louis World's Fair Exhibition in 1904, and at the Panama-American Exhibition in San Francisco in 1915.

He was a popular teacher of figural drawing and painting, known as "Life Classes." He taught at William Merritt Chase's New York School of Art and at Chase's Summer Shinnecock School on Long Island. In 1906, he accepted a position at the Art Students League, and in 1907 he taught art to Georgia O'Keeffe.

Mora's first mural was commissioned by the trustees of the Lynn, MA Public Library in 1900. He also painted the dome of the Missouri State House, St. Louis in 1904, panels for Columbia College in 1909, murals and portraits for the Governor's Mansion of New Jersey in 1911 and a monumental mural for The Red Cross in 1919 in collaboration with Major Joseph Kitchell.

Mora was a prolific illustrator, often winning cover competitions. His illustrations appeared in Harper's magazines, Collier's Monthly, The Century, The New York Tribune (now the NY Times), and other publications.

Mora painted portraits of President Warren Harding, Arthur Rubenstein (for Steinway,) Andrew Carnegie, Anais Nin, and dozens of eminent Americans and their children.

In 1913 Mora bought 28 acres in the Litchfield Hills, Gaylordsville, CT, where he and his wife Sophia built a summer home in 1919. Their only child, Rosemary Mora, was born in 1918 in New York City. Sophia Mora died suddenly in 1931 in Danbury Hospital, CT.

Mora 's second wife was May Safford, the widow of Ray Safford, an officer and director of Scribners Publishing Company.

Luis Mora died at age 64 in 1940 at his home.

Today F. Luis Mora's paintings are held by at least a dozen museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Smithsonian Museum, The Newark Museum, The Hood Museum (Dartmouth University), The San Diego Museum, The Butler Museum of American Art, and The National Gallery of Canada.

Askart:
Written and submitted November 2004 by Lynne Pauls Baron, The F. Luis Mora Project, representative of the estate.

Biography courtesy of Roughton Galleries, www.antiquesandfineart.com/roughton

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