Sara Murphy
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Sara Sherman Wiborg Murphy was born on November 7, 1883 in Cincinnati, Ohio, into the wealthy Wiborg family. Her father, Frank, was a self-made millionaire by the age of 40, and her mother was a member of the noted Sherman family, daughter of Hioy Sherman and counting Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman as an uncle. Originally raised in Cincinnati, Sara Wiborg and her family moved to Germany for several years when she was a teenager, so her father could concentrate on the European expansion of his company. Upon returning to the United States, the Wiborgs eventually spent most of their time in New York City and, later, East Hampton, of which they were one of the first wealthy families to build a house there.
In East Hampton the young Sara Wiborg met her future husband, Gerald Murphy, who was the heir to the Mark Cross company. Five years her junior, for many years Sara and Gerald were more familiar companions than romantically attached. After marrying and having three children, in 1921 Sara and Gerald moved to Paris, to escape the strictures of New York and their families' mutual dissatisfaction with their marriage, eventually buying a house on the French Riviera, where they became the center of a large social circle of artists and writers of later fame in the 20th century, especially Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos and Pablo Picasso.
Pablo Picasso, a friend of Sara's, painted her in several of his 1923 works:
- Femme assise les bras croisés.
- Portrait de Sarah Murphy
- Buste de Femme (Sara Murphy)
- Femme assise en bleu et rose
Nicole and Dick Diver of Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald are widely recognized as based on the Murphys, based on marked physical similarities, although many friends of the Murphys, as well as the Murphys themselves, saw as much or more of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald's relationship and personalities in the couple than the Murphys. Ernest Hemingway's couple in The Garden of Eden is not explicitly based on them, but given the similarities and the setting, Nice, there is clearly some basis for such an assumption. Interestingly, guests of the Murphys would often swim at Eden Roc, an event emulated in The Garden of Eden.
Sara died on October 10, 1975 in Arlington, Virginia, 11 years after her husband.
Amanda Vaill's biography of Gerald and Sara Murphy, Everybody Was So Young, was published in 1998.
On July 12, 2007, a play by Crispin Whittell entitled Villa America, based entirely on the relationships between Sara and Gerald Murphy and luminaries of the early 20th century (such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso) had its world premiere at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Actress Jennifer Mudge originated the role of Sara Murphy. Villa America Webpage
