Gavin Spanierman 2012

F. LUIS MORA (1874– 1940) F. (Francis) Luis Mora was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, on July 27, 1874. In 1880, Mora’s father accepted a position as Director of Design for the Perth Amboy Terra Cotta Company in New Jersey. Mora was raised in Perth Amboy, receiving his first art instruction from his father. The family later moved to Allston, Massachusetts. Mora entered the Boston Museum School of Fine Art in 1889 at the age of fifteen. 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. Mora quickly became a successful figural painter, portraitist, muralist and illustrator. Mora’s life-long artistic goal was to adapt the techniques of the Spanish Old Masters into American modern painting. He frequently trav- eled to Spain to visit his extended family and to paint. Mora honed his skills by copying masterpieces by Diego Velázquez in the El Museo del Prado in Madrid. Mora had his first solo show of Spanish paintings in 1910 at the New York Watercolor Club. 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 many other art societies. He won three medals at National Academy competitions, and he also won medals at the St. Louis World’s Fair Exhibition in 1904, as well as at the Panama-American Exhibition in San Francisco in 1915. In 1912 Mora bought 28 acres in the Litchfield Hills, Gaylordsville, CT. He died in June 1940 at the age of 64. Today F. Luis Mora’s paintings are held by thirty-four major art museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Smithsonian Museum, The Newark Museum, The Hood Museum (Dartmouth University), The San Diego Art Museum, The Butler Museum of American Art, and The National Gallery of Canada. Picnic, Wrentham, Mass., ca. 1900 Oil on board 12 x 24 inches Signed and dated lower right: F. Luis Mora