Daniel Leroy McMorris

McMorris was a portrait painter, muralist, illustrator, decorator and designer, was born 1894 in Sedalia, Missouri, and raised in central Missouri and Kansas City. His first teachers were George Sass in Kansas City, and Alphonso Mucha in Chicago at the Chicago Art Institute. He spent two summers with Leon Gaspard in Taos, and was to remain a pupil and friend for the rest of Gaspard's life.

McMorris was an illustrator for the Kansas City Star and served in both world wars. In the first war he was sent to France in the signal corps. In WW II he spent over three years teaching camouflage in Utah. Following his first assignment to France with the army, he returned to spend five years as a student and artist with his own studio on the right bank. He studied with August Gorguet in Paris and before leaving had an exhibition at the Durand-Ruel Gallery.

McMorris returned to the States and set up a studio in New York City above the Carnegie Hall. While there he studied with Joseph Pennell, Robert Henri and George Bridgeman. He exhibited at the Durand-Ruel Galleries in New York and Newport. After 1945 he resettled in Kansas City, Missouri as a portrait painter, muralist and teacher. He died painting a mural while in his 90's. He has murals in Kansas City in the Nelson Art Gallery, the Liberty Memorial Building, and the Public Library, and in Columbus, Ohio at the State Office Building.

Additional information courtesy of his granddaughter Mary McMorris:

Most of his later career was in Kansas City. He did many murals in public buildings there, as well as modifying and installing the massive “Pantheon de la Guerre” on the walls of Memory Hall at the Liberty Memorial, which reopened as the National World War One Museum in December 2006. In addition to the murals and illustrations for which he is known, he was also a renowned portrait artist who painted Marcel Duchamp, Margaret Truman & children (daughter of President Truman), and prominent business & academic leaders.