Thomas Moran (February 12, 1837 – August 25, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker of the Hudson River School in New York whose work often featured the Rocky Mountains. Moran and his family, wife Mary Nimmo Moran and daughter Ruth, took residence in New York where he obtained work as an artist. He was a younger brother of the noted marine artist Edward Moran, with whom he shared a studio. A talented illustrator and exquisite colorist, Thomas Moran was hired as an illustrator at Scribner's Monthly. During the late 1860s, he was appointed the chief illustrator for the magazine, a position that helped him launch his career as one of the premier painters of the American landscape, in particular, the American West.
Moran along with Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, and William Keith are sometimes referred to as belonging to the Rocky Mountain School of landscape painters because of all of the Western landscape art made by this group.
Biography
Moran was born in
Bolton,
Lancashire, in
England, to Mary (née Higson) and Thomas Moran Sr., one of seven children. His father belonged to a family of handloom weavers. He wanted a better future for his family, so they moved to the United States in 1844, when young Thomas was 7 years old. The trip had a life-long impression on Moran, who later created sketches and paintings of the sea. His family first settled in
Baltimore, moving afterwards to
Kensington, a suburb of
Philadelphia.
[ Thomas Moran, The Art Story]
Moran began his artistic career as a teenage apprentice to the Philadelphia wood-engraving firm Scattergood & Telfer. Moran found the engraving process "tedious"[Wilkins, Thurman. Thomas Moran: Artist of the Mountains. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998, pp. 18–19.] and spent his free time working on his own watercolors.[Wilkins, Thurman, p. 19.] By the mid-1850s, he was drawing the firm's illustrations for publication rather than carving them. It was then that he encountered illustrated books that included examples of the work of British artist J. M. W. Turner, who was to be a lasting influence on Moran's work.
During the 1870s and 1880s, Moran's designs for wood-engraved illustrations appeared in major magazines and gift oriented publications. Although he mastered multiple printing media including wood-engraving, etching, and lithography, which he learned from his brothers, he received renown for his paintings in oil and in watercolor. The height of his career coincided with the popularity of chromolithography, which Moran used to make color prints of his works, so that they could be widely distributed. He was also one of the leaders of the etching revival in the United States and Great Britain.[
]
Moran was married to Scottish born Mary Nimmo Moran (1842–1899), an etcher and landscape painter. The couple had two daughters and a son. His brothers Edward Moran (1829–1901), John (1831–1902) and Peter (1841–1914), as well as his nephews Edward Percy Moran (1862–1935) and Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863–1930) were also active as artists. His brother John was also a pioneer in artistic photography. The two often worked side by side, John photographing the same scene that Thomas was painting.
Yellowstone images
Thomas Moran's vision of the Western landscape was critical to the creation of Yellowstone National Park. In 1871, Ferdinand Vandeever Hayden, director of the United States Geological Survey, invited Moran, at the request of American financier
Jay Cooke, to join Hayden and his expedition team into the unknown Yellowstone region. Hayden was just about to embark on his arduous journey when he received a letter from Cooke presenting Moran as "an artist of Philadelphia of rare genius".
Funded by Cooke (the director of the Northern Pacific Railroad), and
Scribner's Monthly, a new illustrated magazine, Moran agreed to join the survey team of the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871 in their exploration of the Yellowstone region. During forty days in the wilderness area, Moran visually documented over 30 different sites and produced a diary of the expedition's progress and daily activities. His sketches, along with photographs produced by survey member William Henry Jackson, captured the nation's attention and helped inspire Congress to establish the Yellowstone region as the first national park in 1872. Moran's paintings along with Jackson's photographs revealed the scale and splendor of the beautiful Yellowstone region where written or oral descriptions failed, persuading President Grant and the US Congress that Yellowstone was to be preserved. Moran's impact on Yellowstone was great, but Yellowstone had a significant influence on the artist, too. His first national recognition as an artist, as well as his first large financial success, resulted from his connection with Yellowstone. He even adopted a new signature: T-Y-M, Thomas "Yellowstone" Moran. Just one year after his introduction to the area, Moran captured the imagination of the American public with his first enormous painting of a far-western natural wonder,
The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, which the government purchased in 1872 for $10,000.
[ history.house.gov][Richard P. Townsend, Thomas Moran at Gilcrease – Moran and the European Tradition, Gilcrease Journal, vol. 5, no. 1, Spring/Summer 1997.] For the next two decades, he published his work in various periodicals and created hundreds of large paintings. Among these,
The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1872) and
Chasm of the Colorado (1873–74) are exhibited at the
Interior Museum.
Over the next forty years Moran traveled extensively. He went back to Yellowstone with Jackson in 1892. They were invited by Elwood Mead, the state engineer of Wyoming, in preparation for a "Wyoming Exhibition" at the World's Columbian Exposition.[ Thousands of tourists were now able to visit the park, arriving by the Northern Pacific Railway, and Moran and Jackson were able to take advantage of the tourist facilities, such as a hotel at Mammoth Hot Springs. Moran wrote "After a day at Norris we left for the Grand Canyon where we stayed two days and made a great many photos. I saw so much to sketch that I have determined to return there myself after I have been to the Geyser Basins and the lake and spend a week at work there. It is as glorious in color as ever and I was completely carried away by its magnificence. I think I can paint a better picture of it than the old one after I have made my sketches."][ Moran sketched many more images of the Canyon on this trip than he had in 1871, including views from the viewpoint named for him on the 1871 trip, "Moran Point". The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1893–1901) is on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
]
Moran was an honorary artist member of the Salmagundi Club New York beginning in 1888, and served as its 4th president, from 1893 to 1896.[Centennial roster of the Salmagundi Club since its inception in 1871 to 1972. (SCNY, New York, 1972, pp. 86, 131) ]He was elected to the membership of the National Academy of Design in 1884 and produced numerous works of art in his senior years.
Painting in the White House
Thomas Moran has a painting exhibited as part of the White House collection. In the photograph depicting President
Barack Obama and Israeli President
Shimon Peres in the
Oval Office it is seen on the wall: the portrait of George Washington is between
City of Washington from Beyond the Navy Yard (1833) by George Cooke (on the left) and
The Three Tetons (1895) by Thomas Moran (on the right). Official White House photo by
Pete Souza.
Legacy
The Thomas Moran House in East Hampton, New York is a National Historic Landmark.
in the Grand Teton National Park is named for Moran.
His work is held in the collection of the
Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, R. W. Norton Art Gallery, and the
Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
Selected works
-
Nearing Camp. Evening on the Upper Colorado River, Wyoming, 1882. Bolton Museum, UK
File:Thomas Moran - Under the Trees.jpg| Under the Trees, 1865
File:Yellowstone Canyon.JPG| Yellowstone Canyon, 1872
File:Colburn's Butte, South Utah MET SFcsimage1.jpg| Colburn's Butte, South Utah, 1873, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
File:Thomas Moran Mosquito Trail.JPG| Mosquito Trail, 1874
File:Thomas Moran - The Golden Hour - Google Art Project.jpg| The Golden Hour, 1875
File:Shoshone Falls Idaho Thomas Moran.jpeg| Shoshone Falls, Idaho, ca. 1875
File:Green River Wyoming Moran.jpg| Green River, Wyoming (1878), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
File:Thomas Moran - Mist in Kanab Canyon, Utah - Google Art Project.jpg| Mist in Kanab Canyon, Utah, 1892
File:Moran, Thomas, Venice, The Lagoon Looking toward Santa Maria della Salute, 1894.jpg| Venice: The Lagoon Looking toward Santa Maria della Salute, 1894, Princeton University Art Museum
File:Gilcrease - Shenandoah River.jpg| Shoshone Falls on the Snake River (1900), Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK.
File:1975-28 s.jpg|Thomas Moran, Cliffs of Green River, 1874, Amon Carter Museum of American Art
File:Moran, Thomas - Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, 1904.jpg| Grand Canyon of Yellow Stone (1904), Honolulu Museum of Art.
File:Brooklyn Museum - Sunset at Sea - Thomas Moran - overall.jpg| Sunset at Sea , ca. 1906
File:An Angry Sea - Thomas Moran (1887).jpg| An angry sea (1887), Philbrook Museum, Tulsa OK
File:Green River, Wyoming by Thomas Moran.jpg| Green River, Wyoming (1907), Tacoma Art Museum
File:Valley of Babbling Waters, Southern Utah - DPLA - e86084d9faabc06cccb25acd730033a6.jpg| Valley of Babbling Waters, Southern Utah, (c) 1876; from the Louis Prang & Company Collection of the Boston Public Library
File:Great falls of Snake River, Idaho Territory - DPLA - 0b9e4a8fde5b137a9a621d7f5e6b7c3c.jpg|Great falls of Snake River, Idaho Territory, (c) 1876; from the Louis Prang & Company Collection of the Boston Public Library
File:The Castle Geyser, Upper Geyser Park - DPLA - dbdff7bb99cbfcf1af7dd311e85f4d04.jpg|The Castle Geyser, Upper Geyser Park, (c) 1874; from the Louis Prang & Company Collection of the Boston Public Library
See also
Sources
Further reading
External links
