The WW II Art and Letters of John Cullen Murphy, an American Soldier-Artist in the Pacific Theatre

Location

Virtual

USA

Cost

Brown Alumni	free
Current students	free
Friends & Family	free

 The Brown Club of Houston invites you to learn about John Cullen Murphy, WWII soldier and artist, with Andrew Woelflein '86.

John Cullen Murphy entered the US Army as a private before the Americans entered WW II; he ended the war as a major serving as a General’s Aide de Camp. Trained as an Anti-Aircraft (AA) specialist, his artistic talent was recognized by many including Douglas MacArthur who made him the effective headquarters staff artist in the Pacific. Mentored by Norman Rockwell before the war, Murphy went on to illustrate the nationally syndicated Prince Valiant comic strip for more than 30 years after the war from his home studio in Cos Cob, CT.

Over five years from 1941 to 1945 Murphy wrote approximately 1,000 letters home to his mother on his wartime experience in both the US and the Pacific, including Australia, New Guinea, the Philippines, and Japan. The Murphy family generously donated his wartime art to the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection at Brown University in 1995 to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of WWII and donated the letters in 2013. Andrew Woelflein will discuss this unique primary-source collection and its wartime perspective.

Mr. Woelflein has been a Trustee of Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection at Brown University since 1996 and served as the Presiding Trustee from 2013 to 2022. One of the world’s foremost collections of military iconography, it uses its vast material of over 28,000 military art images to promote knowledge of military history through lectures, museum exhibitions, supporting research, and publications. Mr. Woelflein has lectured widely on the collection and is the author of Herbert Knotel’s German Armies in Color (2007), featuring depictions of German army units from the 17th to 20th century.

He is a financial services executive, serving as the Chief Strategy Officer of Monex, a global FinTech provider of corporate foreign exchange and international payment services. He holds a BA from Brown University in European History and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Link to the webinar: https://bit.ly/30IBj21