Elizabeth Miller McMurry’s paintings, part 1

Botanical still lifeAround 1990, when both my grandmother, Dorothy Ruth (McMurry) Black (1917–1997), and her first cousin, Arthur “Art” Edgar McMurry (1915–2001), were still alive, I paid a visit to Art out at his home on Black Lake, outside of Olympia, Washington. Art had become the caretaker of the McMurry family heirlooms, and in addition to the photos and artifacts he possessed, he had a prodigious memory for family history.

Art pointed out three old paintings he had on the walls of his house and told me that they were painted by Elizabeth Miller McMurry (1828–1876), his great-grandmother and my 3rd-great-grandmother. Previous to this, I hadn’t heard anything about Elizabeth being a painter. Her three paintings were amazing. They all appeared to have been painted with oils on canvas and then coated in varnish. Each of the paintings had been framed in ornate, gilt wooden frames. The frame of one painting had three areas of modest damage, and the canvas of that same painting was punctured and torn—apparently from having fallen on a dining room chair at some point. The other two paintings and frames were in better shape.

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