FEATURED OBJECT

Francis Luis Mora (Uruguay-USA, 1874-1940)

Fourth of July, 1913

Francis Luis Mora was born in 1874 in Montevideo, Uruguay. His father, Domingo, was a well-known sculptor from Catalonia and served as his first art teacher. He was also related by marriage on his mother’s side to the Bacardi family of Cuba (of Bacardi rum fame). His family fled Uruguay in 1877 during a period of civil unrest, initially heading to his father’s homeland of Catalonia before arriving in the United States the following year.

The Mora family eventually settled in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, which Francis would continue to call home for most of the rest of his life. He married his childhood sweetheart and the daughter of the mayor, Sophia “Sonia” Brown Compton (d. 1931), in 1900. Their only child, a daughter named Rosemary, was born in 1918 and became her father’s muse, appearing in many of his paintings thereafter. Mora worked in a variety of formats, including easel painting, murals, and illustration. He also worked as an art teacher in New York City, counting among his students a young Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986).

Mora painted this triptych in 1913 as a study for a mural commissioned by the local yacht club in Perth Amboy. The clear influence of Impressionism on his brushwork and treatment of light can be attributed to his education at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he studied under two American Impressionists: Edmund Charles Tarbell (1862-1938) and Frank Weston Benson (1862-1951). Sadly, his final mural was lost soon after its completion when the yacht club building burned down in 1915. Thankfully, this version was kept by Rosemary, who sold it to the museum’s founder, Sewell Biggs, in 1967. You can view it in our American Impressionism gallery.

References:

Baron, Lynne Pauls. F. Luis Mora: America’s First Hispanic Master (1874-1940). Madison, CT: Falk Art Reference, 2008.

2025. Louis Mora [official website]. Archived from the original via Wayback Machine. Accessed June 22, 2025. https://web.archive.org/web/20041207214218/http://www.fluismora.org/.

“F Luis Mora: An American Master in Perth Amboy.” Posted February 5, 2018, by squantum. YouTube, 29:23. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IDo_2-k650.

Zimmerman, Philip D., Roxanne M. Stanulis, and William H. Gerdts. The Sewell C. Biggs Collection of American Art: Vol. 2, Paintings and Sculpture. Dover, DE: Biggs Museum of American Art, 2002.