Early Years and Education
F. Luis Mora was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, to Domingo Mora, a noted sculptor from Catalonia, and Laura Gaillard, a cultured French woman originally from the Bordeaux region of France. Laura Gaillard Mora had two sisters, Ernestina and Gabriella, who married into the Bacardi family, famous for its rum. Mora was close to the Bacardi family all of his life. He had a younger brother, Joseph Jacinto "Jo" Mora, who would go on to become a noted sculptor, photographer and author in California.
The Moras left Uruguay during an insurgency in 1877, when they went to Catalonia. In 1880, they arrived in New York City, and quickly relocated to Perth Amboy, New Jersey, where Domingo Mora accepted a position with the A.H. White Terra Cotta Company, which was renamed The Perth Amboy Terra Cotta Company. The family would later relocate to Allston, Massachusetts (near Boston), where Domingo Mora had sculpture commissions. Mora graduated from Allston High School, and stated in a later interview that he remembered the school fondly. During the Economic Crash of 1893, they all went back to Perth Amboy, New Jersey, which remained Mora's home base all of his life.
While he was a child, Mora's father oversaw his early education in the arts, and young Luis produced hundreds of drawings and watercolors. He was a precocious young artist, drawing historical scenes and scenes of his contemporary environs. At the age of fifteen Mora enrolled in the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he studied under the American Impressionists Edmund Charles Tarbell and Frank Weston Benson. In 1892, Mora went on to complete his education at the Art Students League of New York, studying with Henry Siddons Mowbray. By 1892, he was also receiving commissions for illustrations in popular magazines of the era. His formal art education was complete in 1893, when he was just 19 years old.
In 1896 when he was 22 years old, Mora traveled to Europe with his mother, his third trip to Europe. The two visited family in Barcelona and then headed to Madrid, where Mora coincidentally saw William Merritt Chase in the Museo del Prado. It was there, alongside Chase, that Mora became inspired by the art of Diego Velázquez and other Spanish Old Masters. Over the course of many visits to the Prado, Mora practiced and refined his technique by painting copies of Velasquez's works.
In 1900, Mora married the daughter of the mayor of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, Sophia ("Sonia") Brown Compton, who was his childhood sweetheart. She encouraged his easel painting, and he set forth on a successful career.
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