A true believer in the power of art
Montreal lost one of its great patrons and promoters of the arts when Dr. Sean Buller Murphy, former president of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, died March 16 at age 93.
“The MMFA, the city of Montreal, Quebec and Canada have lost an exceptional man whose achievements are woven fast into the fabric of our history,” said Museum president Jacques Parisien in a statement. “We will pay him tribute at the Museum in the coming months.”
“Murphy believed that in viewing works of art, a man discovers and understands who he is, and that art, like music, can soothe the soul,” wrote Georges-Hébert Germain in the book A City’s Museum: A History of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
Murphy was born in London, England, on Jan. 25, 1924. His involvement with the MMFA began in 1959, when he joined the membership committee. After serving in multiple volunteer capacities, he was president from 1968 to 1979, and honorary president from 1980 until quite recently, when he was unable to continue because of Alzheimer’s.
“He served the Museum so well, through crucial times of increasing professionalization and expansion,” Hilliard Goldfarb, senior curator in Collections at the MMFA, told the Montreal Gazette.
“He had a great passion for art — and a youthful one. He never lost that intense joy. He gave the Museum about 140 works, from preColumbian all the way up to some fabulous drawings and sculptures by Henry Moore, to contemporary Canadian works by Colville and others.”
Murphy no doubt acquired his artistic interest partly from his parents. His mother, Cecil Buller, was an acclaimed woodblock printmaker whose work is represented in the collections of the MMFA, the British Museum, La Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the National Gallery of Canada and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His father, John J.A. Murphy, was also a printmaker (the two met in London when he was a camouflage designer for the American army) whose works were also owned by prestigious institutions.
An internationally renowned ophthalmologist, Murphy graduated from Harvard in 1943 and got his medical degree from McGill in 1947. After a period in charge of ophthalmological services in the Royal Canadian Air Force, he joined McGill’s department of ophthalmology and the staff of the Royal Victoria Hospital. In 1975, he was named chairman of the McGill department of ophthalmology, where he remained until 1986. He was named to the Order of Canada in 1976.
Murphy was predeceased by his wife Elizabeth Anne Blake, and is survived by children Gaill, Brian and Carolyn, grandchildren Sarah Welsh, Graham Thompson, Erin (Dylan Templin), and Peter, and great-grandson Damian Welsh.
A memorial service is being held Saturday at 2 p.m. at St-Léon-deWestmount Church, 4311 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.