Thomas Moran
Thomas Moran
apprenticed to a Philadelphia wood
engraving firm, but by 1858 at the age
of twenty-one, he had exhibited an oil
painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of
the Fine Arts. Encouraged by the marine
painter, James Hamilton, Moran traveled
to London in 1861, where he was deeply
impressed by the dynamic effects and
glowing color of J. M. W. Turner. He
also visited France and Italy in 1866 to
study the Old Masters, but his early
American reputation was gained as an
illustrator. In 1871 Moran went west
with the Hayden Expedition to record the
wonders of the Yellowstone area, making
annotated drawings and watercolors later
used to illustrate articles in the
popular press as well as the official
report. Moran's watercolors and his very
large oil painting, The Grand Canyon of
the Yellowstone, 84 x 144 inches (1872,
National Museum of American Art, lent by
the U.S. Department of the Interior),
convinced the U. S. Congress to set this
area aside as America's first national
park.
Moran first visited the Grand Canyon of
the Colorado in 1873, and the resulting
Chasm of the Colorado (1874, National
Museum of American Art, lent by the U.
S. Department of the Interior) further
enhanced his reputation as the
preeminent painter of the Southwest. In
1879, Moran traveled to the Tetons, the
Sierra Nevada, and to Lake Tahoe.
Although during the 1880s he based some
pictures on his journeys abroad and to
Mexico, his reputation rests mainly on
the paintings of the American West.
Moran continued to paint the landscape
moods of the Southwest, returning almost
every year between 1901, when the Santa
Fe completed the rail line to the Grand,
Canyon, and his death in 1926. Since his
first visit in 1873, he had traveled to
the Rockies, Europe and Mexico, yet he
was drawn back again and again to the
Southwest. Alongside him now came
travelers attracted to the region for
the first time by the landscape images
he had created. |
 Ethnographic Artifacts
John Dawson
Dorothy Knop
Thomas Moran
George Resler
Henry Varnum Poor
Fine Art Prints
Elaine Rothwell
Fritz Scholder
Arthur Secunda
Japanese Woodcuts |
