Murv Jacob (January 27, 1945 - February 26, 2019) was an American artist and illustrator. He is known for his paintings illustrating the culture of Cherokee people and the landscape of the Southeastern United States.
From 1965 to 1967 Jacob lived in San Francisco, where he made posters for artists such as Allen Ginsberg and the Grateful Dead. He returned to Kansas in 1971, and in 1984 moved to Tahlequah, Oklahoma, a center for the culture of the Cherokee Nation.
Jacob created oil and acrylic paintings portraying the old and modern Cherokee dances, and the villages, animals, landscapes and perhaps best known for his illustrations of the old Cherokee animal stories especially those about Ji-sdu the rabbit and Yona the bear.
In 2011, Jacob co-wrote and illustrated the book Secret History of the Cherokees
In 2015, Jacob was in the news when a neighbors insisted that he remove a graffiti-like painting which he had commissioned on the side wall of his studio fifteen years before.
Jacob died on February 26, 2019.
Awards
Jacob won more than 50 awards, and has twice been voted Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers' Illustrator of the Year. In 2012, he won the Wordcraft Circle Award for Secret History of the Cherokees.
Jacob and his partner Debbie Duvall, who have collaborated on a dozen books, received the “Oklahoma Book Award” in 2005 for their seven book series “The Grandmother Stories”.
Selected illustration credits
Rabbit and the Well
Rabbit and the Fingerbone Necklace
Rabbit Goes to Kansas
Rabbit Plants the Forest
Rabbit and the Wolves
Rabbit Goes Duck Hunting
Rabbit and the Bears
The Opossum's Tale
How Rabbit Tricked Otter and Other Cherokee Trickster Stories
How Rabbit Lost his Tail
How Medicine Came to the People: a Tale of the Ancient Cherokees
The Great Ball Game of the Birds and Animals, winner of the 2003 Oklahoma book awards
Four Ancestors: Stories, Songs, and Poems from Native North America
Tecumseh: Leader
How Turtle‘s Back Was Cracked
Boy Who Lived with the Bears and Other Iroquois Stories
Rabbit and the Bears
Dog People: Native Dog Stories
Turtle Meat and Other Stories
Circle of Thanks
Flying with the Eagle, Racing the Great Bear
The Legend of the Windigo
The Dark Island
The Long Way Home
The Dark Way
Mountain Windsong
Cherokee Dragon
The Way of the Priests
War Woman
The Peace Chief
The War Trail North
The Way South
Ezekiel's Wheels
The Education of Little Tree
Pushing the Bear
Designs of the Night Sky
Mankiller: A Chief and her people
Tribes of the Southern Woodlands
Notes
12Conley, Robert J. (2007). "Jacob, Murv". A Cherokee Encyclopedia. UNM Press. ISBN9780826339515.