Arthur W. McMurtry, 97, artist, teacher of painting

Painting was Arthur W. McMurtry's love, a passion so deep that he could not countenance making a living from art. Parting with a watercolor was, for him, a spiritual exchange.

"His paintings were his friends, and he wanted them treated as well as he treated his friends," said his niece, Jean Marquand of East Orleans. "It was never just a commercial or monetary transaction. He had created them as a personal extension of who he was and what he had been given, his gift. You had to be liked by Uncle Arthur in order to have access to his art."

A painting teacher and curriculum director for more than 35 years, mostly at Rindge Technical School, Mr. McMurtry had lived in Cambridge from childhood until 1975, when he retired to his summer home in Dennis. He was 97 when he died of respiratory failure on Jan. 24 in the Liberty Commons care center in North Chatham.

"Uncle Arthur did other things, too," said his nephew Robert of Concord. "He played the piano and would play chords and put them together. He set up a tape recorder at one point and was doing these talking songs. It was like poetry, and this was in his 90s."

Most of Mr. McMurtry's creativity flowed onto paper, however. Schooled in the traditional skills of his calling, he had little use for abstract art, preferring the challenge of watercolors painted with an impressionistic flair.

"His watercolor style was very loose, a true watercolor style where he knew not to labor, that you needed to have the white of the paper coming through," his nephew said. "Traditional watercolor is a very translucent medium. . . . It's not like oil, where you can opaque over it. With watercolor, it's a little less forgiving. It's a fast medium."

His nephew added, "I think he was just a master of that, and yet he could take a piece of color charcoal and do a portrait that was as good as anything I've ever seen. People are not easy, and he could just knock them dead."

Mr. McMurtry graduated from Rindge High School and eschewed a scholarship at Harvard College to study art, his niece said. He graduated from Massachusetts College of Art with a bachelor of arts degree in 1932 and a bachelor of science in 1934, she said, and received a master's from Boston University in 1939.

He began teaching in 1934 and taught in a few communities before moving to Rindge Technical School in Cambridge five years later. While teaching and working as a curriculum administrator were his principal jobs for the next 36 years, Mr. McMurtry's family said he also created illustrations for publishing companies, penned designs for Stanley Instrument Co., and lent his expertise to the Air Force balloon astronomy project at Tufts University.

Mr. McMurtry and Erma June Ramsdell married when he began working at Rindge, and the couple bought land in Dennis, where they had their summer house built. They lived on Harvard Street in Cambridge, within walking distance of Rindge Technical School .

"The house was one of these long, thin Victorians, and Arthur had filled every available space with bookcases," said the Rev. Joshua Crowell of Dennis, a longtime friend. "The place was filled with books and art."

Mr. McMurtry, he said, built his own bookcases from pine boards and metal rods.

"They had a very interesting, spare, artistic look about them," he said.

At school, Mr. McMurtry "was an excellent teacher," said Chet Hall of Londonderry, N.H., a former colleague. "He imparted all kinds of values to the kids, not only in art. He was interested in the fullness of the student."

Although watercolor was his medium, Mr. McMurtry was also known for his agile mind and facility with language.

"He read everything, and he remembered everything," his niece said. "He could recite backwards the alphabet. He could do it in less than 45 seconds. This is how he entertained himself at night when he couldn't sleep."

"He had a memory like no one else I know," Hall said. "I said to him, 'You're like William Shakespeare reincarnated.' He would make up a poem while we were talking."

Usually those poems would vanish moments after creation, recited to friends in passing and never recorded on paper. Mr. McMurtry wrote down some of his poetry, however, and a limerick called "Criticism" that he wrote a few months before he died suggests that he never quite came to terms with those who appraise the arts.

A critic with unmitigated gallWas known to know nothing at allHe cut like a raspAnd hissed like an aspWhen from under his rock he did crawl. One of Mr. McMurtry's daughters lived only a few years; the other died about a decade ago. His wife died in the early 1990s, leaving him alone in their Dennis home. There, too, he surrounded himself with books, about 3,000, his niece estimated.

"After he retired, his painting became more an invitation to a conversation," she said.

And when a discussion ensued, Mr. McMurtry was a storyteller with few peers.

"He was just the consummate conversationalist," his niece said. "He could keep people spellbound."

A service has been held. A monthlong exhibition of his paintings will be held in the Dennis Memorial Library, beginning July 29.