Ada (Adah) Clifford Murphy was born in Saratoga, New York. She studied at the Cooper Union Art School and with Douglas Volk in New York. She was a member of the National Art Club.

Her works were exhibited at the National Academy of Design in New York beginning in 1886 and in 1894 she received a prize for a painting titled "That Difficult Word. " She also exhibited at the Pan-American Exposition, held in Buffalo in 1901, where she received an honorable mention and with the American Water Color Society in 1898.

In November 1883 she married the artist John Frances Murphy. When she was a student at Cooper Union when they met at a skating party. In 1894 they established a studio in the Hotel Chelsea but after a visit to Arkville, a small town in the Catskill Mountains of New York, they decided to leave the city. In 1887 they built a home and studio in Arkville and in the lean years offered summer art classes in the village.

The prior year, 1886, they took a six month holiday in Europe, first staying in London and then journeying to France. In June they had stayed in Montigny where Ada wrote in her diary, they "sketched houses and countryside, until October, when they departed for Amsterdam." She wrote they were good museum-goers and had seen many paintings they had known only from photos.

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