Shop Sign 1937

Henry Murphy made this shop sign, sometime between 1855 and 1995, using watercolor, graphite, and maybe some colored pencil, on paper. What I notice first are the marks that suggest carved wood, how the leaves at the top are made of small, deliberate strokes, giving them dimension and texture. It is a careful study of light and shadow, each grape rendered with attention to its form and placement within the cluster. The color palette is muted, mostly greens and purples, but there's a depth in the shading that makes it feel almost three-dimensional. You can almost feel the weight of the grapes, how they hang heavy and full. Look at the hook at the top. It’s so simple, but it grounds the whole piece in reality. It reminds us that this isn’t just an image, it’s a sign, something meant to be seen and used. Murphy's sign reminds me a little of the work of Charles Demuth, who also played with precision and a sense of underlying geometry. It’s this combination of careful observation and a bit of playful abstraction that makes this sign so special, it embraces the ambiguities of representation.