Murray McNeel Caird Urquhart

Murray McNeel Caird Urquhart (24 April 1880 – 12 April 1972), commonly known as Murray Urquhart, was a Scottish painter and book illustrator. He was a member of the Royal Society of British Artists.

Early life Urquhart was born in Kirkcudbright, Scotland. His maternal grandfather was Alexander McNeel Caird who was the procurator fiscal of Wigtownshire.

Career Urquhart was a watercolorist in the classic British tradition, specializing in landscapes. He was known for landscapes with a pointilliste technique.

Personal life Urquhart was a spiritualist who said he could talk to ghosts. In April 1911, Urquhart married schoolteacher Bertha Rendall in Bridport, Dorset. Their first child, Andrew, was born in April 1914, followed by their second, Brian, in February 1919. His son Brian said, “The Great War presented a problem for my father, who would do anything to avoid military service. Was he mortally afraid of violent death? Or did he consider that painting was the only thing that he had the right and obligation to do? In any case, his obsession was such that he would hide, take a false name—anything to escape conscription."

Brian also recalled, “My father was single-minded to a fault. Painting took absolute priority in his life, and his wife and children—not to mention national events and international disasters—were all secondary. He painted during daylight hours wherever he happened to be. What he did for money remained a mystery, except that we evidently had very little of it and lived in a primitive farm cottage without electricity or running water.” In 1925, Urquhart left his wife and children, riding away on his bicycle with his easel and paintbox. He never saw Bertha again.

Two years later, he married Agatha Muriel Anne Snow, his cousin; although he never officially divorced Bertha. He lived outside of London where his two sons from his prior marriage would visit for ten days each year. In the early-mid 1930s he and his new wife lived in Kent, and later moved to Kensington, Somerset, and a retirement home in Alton, Hampshire. He died in 1972 at Hindhead, Surrey at the age of 91.