Murphy , a 1912 graduate of Yale , was , along with his wife and his classmate Cole Porter , among the first Americans to move to France after World War I . Though he trained as a landscape architect and studied with the Russian painter Natalia Goncharova , he abandoned landscapes and instead was encouraged by Picasso -LRB- who painted him and his wife -RRB- and inspired by Gris , Braque and Leger .