The Washington Post - USA (2022-03-27)

SUNDAY, MARCH 27 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ EE E3

of his true nature, and his heart

was “a faulty ‘instrument de pré-

cision’ ” (high-quality timepiece).

Incredible how a diagrammat-

ic painting of a luxury product

can simultaneously anticipate

the Pop Art of Andy Warhol and

hark back to Oscar Wilde and

Henry James. Amazing that it can

conjure an idea of the self as

paradoxical, contradictory and

full of hidden depths. And tragic

that, just four years later, its

maker lost faith in his own worth

as an artist and stopped painting

altogether.

Fitzgerald’s character, Dick Diver

(based on Gerald) is credited with

“the power of arousing a fascinat-

ed and uncritical love.” But there

was something compulsive, al-

most impersonal about his need

to produce these “carnivals of

affection,” and he was conscious

of the “waste and extravagance

involved.”

In a l etter to the poet Archibald

MacLeish, Gerald lamented: “I

awaken to find that I have appar-

ently never had one real relation-

ship.” His life, he continued, had

been “a process of concealment”

ing to say about himself?

The allusions to his father and

Sara are clear, and the Roman

numerals on the face of the pock-

et w atch from her probably allude

to the couple’s three children. But

time-telling instruments were

also resonant metaphors for Mur-

phy’s self-conception.

He once explained that he was

“always struck by the mystery and

depth of the interiors of a watch

— its multiplicity, variety and

feeling of movement, and man’s

grasp at perpetuity.” Why “perpe-

tuity”?

Watches don’t just tell time;

they offer a shot at mastering it.

Even as hearts stop pumping,

these incredibly delicate instru-

ments are designed to keep on

ticking and to be handed down

through the generations.

But according to Daniel Nied,

the former director of the school

of horology at the National Asso-

ciation of Watch and Clock Col-

lectors in Columbia, Pa., the

mainspring of the central time-

piece in “Watch” is separated

from the center wheel by a

sheath, while the balance wheel is

too far from the escape wheel to

allow contact. In other words, for

all the astonishing accuracy of

Murphy’s rendering, the main

timepiece in “Watch” appears to

be inoperable. This has been read

as a coded admission of what

Murphy saw as the flaw in his

marriage, and within himself.

The Murphys did more than

anyone to turn the French Riviera

into the playground we know

today. But if their parties were

legendary, so was their compul-

sive need to exert control. Their

hospitality was famously warm,

but it followed a strict timetable.

After a 1931 visit, the artist Fer-

nand Léger said: “It is almost as if

Time is a member of the family ...

someone who is consulted and

dominates everything.” Another

guest, Richard Myers, com-

plained to his wife that “Gerald

just managed me within an inch

of my life — every minute ac-

counted for.” (All this is in Roth-

schild’s wonderful catalogue es-

say.)

In “Tender Is the Night,”

BY SEBASTIAN SMEE

T

his massive, mesmeriz-

ing work, measuring 6

feet by 6 feet, is one of

only 14 p ictures painted

by Gerald Murphy. O nly

seven survive. Murphy (1888-

1964), with his wife, Sara, was at

the center of a dazzling circle that

included Ernest Hemingway,

Pablo Picasso, Dorothy Parker,

Cole Porter (Gerald’s roommate

at Yale) and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald famously based Dick

and Nicole Diver, the central

characters in his novel “Tender Is

the Night,” on the Murphys.

“Watch,” a treasure at the Dal-

las Museum of Art, is at once a

diagrammatic representation of

two small timepieces and a de-

flected self-portrait. In ways that

scholars have only recently come

to appreciate, the two things are

intimately linked.

The painting’s central time-

piece is a railroad watch designed

by Mark W. Cross, the leather

goods company that Murphy’s

businessman father, Patrick, had

purchased in the late 1800 s,

transforming it into a thriving

transatlantic luxury brand.

The other, in the picture’s up-

per right, is a gold pocket watch

that Sara, a Cincinnati heiress

with a bohemian spirit, had given

Gerald as an engagement pre-

sent. Gerald adored Sara. She

represented not only “all that is

pure in life,” he wrote her, but also

“life itself.” His affection was re-

ciprocated. The problem was that

Gerald was attracted to men.

This caused him tremendous

and enduring anguish. Later in

life, as Deborah Rothschild wrote

in “Making It New: The Art and

Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy,”

Gerald filled a box with clippings

and handwritten notes full of

lament and self-loathing (“I

should like to break with myself”)

and quotes (“Canst thou not min-

ister to a mind diseased ... ?” from

“Macbeth”).

Why paint the inner workings

of two timepieces in a magnified,

heroic style combining cubist

multiplicity with Precisionist ex-

actitude? What was Murphy try-

GREAT WORKS, IN FOCUS

It’s not a self-portrait,

but it’s very revealing

DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART/ESTATE OF HONORIA MURPHY DONNELLY/LICENSED BY VAGA

Gerald Murphy ( b. 1888)

Watch, 1925

At the Dallas Museum of Art

A series featuring art critic Sebastian Smee’s favorite works

in permanent collections across the United States

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