Mora was born in 1874 in Uruguay. His father, Domingo Mora, was a well-known artist who gave Mora his early artistic training. The family moved to the United States, and Mora attended school in New Jersey, New York City and Boston. He studied drawing with Frank Benson and Edmund Tarbell at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School; later he studied under H. Siddons Mowbray at the Art Students League in New York City. He also traveled to Europe to study the great paintings of the old masters.
By age 18, Mora was illustrating for leading periodicals. He began exhibiting two years later, and in 1900 he received a commission for a mural in the public library of Lynn, Massachusetts. In 1904, he painted the Missouri State Building mural for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. He also painted portraits of Andrew Carnegie and president Warren G. Harding; the latter hangs in the White House.
Mora worked in oil, watercolor, charcoal and pastel; in addition, he produced etchings and sculture. His subjects were generally interiors, seascapes and landscapes with figures. Like Tarbell and Benson, Mora captured the flavor of leisured life, particularly in outdoor scenes. He also painted Indian and Western scenes (his brother, Joseph Jacinto Mora, also received considerable recognition for his paintings and sculpture of Western subjects).
Mora taught at the Art Students League, the Grand Central School of Art and the New York School of Art, all in New York City. He died in 1940.
Allied Artists of America
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oil on canvas Hunter Museum of American Art, NYC
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Francis Luis Mora, son of one painter and sculptor and brother of another, was an illustrator, muralist and portraitist whose work reflects a blend of Spanish and modern-American influences.