Adolfo Müller-Ury

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Adolfo Müller-Ury (1862-1947) was a Swiss-born American portrait painter. He was born Felice Adolfo Muller on March 29, 1862 at Airolo, in the Ticino in Switzerland, into a prominent patrician family whose lineage included mercenaries, lawyers, hoteliers and businessmen. He studied painting under Melchior-Paul von Deschwanden in Switzerland (who died in his arms in February 1881), at the Munich Academy from 1881-1882, and at possibly at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, under Cabanel in 1884. He was for two years (1882-84) in Rome, before deciding to visit the America in 1884 where he had relatives in St Paul, Minnesota. For a number of years he commuted between New York and Europe, but after the great success of his portraits of Senator Chauncey M. Depew in 1890 and Mrs Theodore Havemeyer in 1891 (now the property of the Preservation Society of Newport County, Rhode Island), in 1892 applied for American citizenship. Although he painted religious pictures throughout his career, he is best known for his portraits of prominent personages in Europe and America. These include Cardinals Joseph Hergenröther and Gustav Adolf Hohenlohe when in Rome in 1884, Pope Pius X [Pope Pius X] in 1907 (North American College, Rome), 1908 and 1911 (Catholic University of America, Washington), Merry del Val in 1907, Lord and Lady Strathcona, Lord Mount Stephen, Emperor William II (1909, at the New Palace, Potsdam) now lost, but the oil sketch is now at the Max-Planck Institute in Berlin, President William McKinley the standing version is now at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, General Ulysses S. Grant since 1897 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, Senator and Mrs. Chauncey M. Depew (also etched), J. Pierpont Morgan some eight times, James J. Hill the finest portrait of whom he painted in 1902 and was formerly in the collection of the New York Chamber of Commerce and now hangs at the offices of Credit Suisse First Boston in New York, Mrs. Woodrow Wilson (1916) now at the White House, President Wilson delivering his "war speech" before Congress on April 3, 1917 (at the League of Nations in Geneva, the gift of Lord Duveen in 1935), of Cardinal Mercier during his visit to the United States often misleadingly stated to be at Catholic University at Washington but actually in Switzerland at the Stiftung Adolfo Muller-Ury in Hospental, Canton Uri, of Pope Pius XI in 1923 for which he was made a Knight of St Gregory the Great (two versions), and full-length seated in 1930 for which he was raised to the title of Papal Count, and in 1940, in his late style the radio soprano Jessica Dragonette (Georgian Court School, New Jersey). He built a studio in San Marino, California in 1924 where he executed portraits of Henry Huntington, his niece Mary Brockway Metcalf, Henry Robinson and President Rufus von Kleinsmid (1931) of the University of Southern California. He painted a series of impressionistic rose paintings throughout his career, particularly after 1918 using Chinese vases from the collection of J. Pierpont Morgan that he copied at the galleries of Duveen Brothers in New York. He exhibited at Durand-Ruel Galleries in New York in 1897, Knoedlers in New York many times until 1913, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington in 1908, Duveen Brothers, New York in 1925, Wildenstein's New York in 1937 and French & Co, New York in 1947. He died of cancer on July 6, 1947 at the Lenox Hill Hospital, New York. See Stephen Conrad, 'Re-introducing Adolfo Muller-Ury 1862-1947' in The British Art Journal, Volume 4, No. 2, Summer 2003, pp.57-65.

• This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.