Sculptor Samuel Aloysius M. Murray was born in Philadelphia in 1869. He was the 11th of 12 children of an immigrant Irish stonemason. He attended local public and parochial schools and, in the winter of 1886-87 at the age of 17, enrolled in the Art Students League of Philadelphia, where he studied painting under the direction of sole instructor, Thomas Eakins.

Murray soon decided to specialize in sculpture and in 1892 he and Eakins began to share a studio at 1330 Chestnut Street which they maintained together for eight years. In 1890, Eakins secured a part-time faculty position for Murray at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art). From that time until the week before his death in 1941, Murray taught modeling and lectured on anatomy at the school. Murray was well-known in the Philadelphia area for his sculpture of life-size and small-scale portraits of relatives, friends and patrons. A few of the large-scale works by Murray are ten biblical figures of terra-cotta for the eighth-floor ledge of the Witherspoon Building in Philadelphia (his first public commission), a large bronze statue of Commodore John Barry located near Independence Hall, and the marble Civil War monument topped by a 20 -foot-high bronze Winged Victory for Gettysburg National Military Park.