World War II Navy Art by Murray
Albert K. Murray (1906-1992)
Commander, USNR
Upon graduating cum laude from the College of Fine Arts, Syracuse University, Murray, a native of Emporia, Kansas, continued his studies both in the United States and Europe. Already a well-known portrait painter before he was commissioned a Lieutenant with the Combat Art Section, his first assignment was to execute a series of portraits of the Navy's General Board, which were the first of his many now famous military portraits. Attached to the Fourth Fleet, South Atlantic, and then the Eighth Fleet, North African waters, he often sketched in the heat of battle. The Navy awarded him the Bronze Star for bravery.
After the war, Mr. Murray painted official portraits of Navy war heroes for the service and served as the director of the Navy Combat Art Collection and its Operation Palette, a series of Navy art shows that traveled throughout the country.
As a civilian, Murray also painted prominent civilians, among them Thomas J. Watson of I.B.M., the philanthropist Laurance S. Rockefeller, and Arthur Hays Sulzberger, former publisher of the New York Times. His work is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of American Art, and the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and Justice. He died in 1992.
