ART & ARTISTS: 2012-07-22

Saturday, 28 July 2012

Thomas Moran - part 2

1871 Gardiner River, Liberty Cap

1871 Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

1871 Great Springs of the Firehole River

1871 Hot Springs of Gardiner River

1871 In the Grand Canyon

1871 Liberty Cap, Clematis Gulch

1871 Sand in the Canyon
watercolour 14.6 x 25.2 cm

1871 The Devil's Slide, Yellowstone
watercolour 26 x 17.8 cm

1871 Tower Creek
watercolour 19.7 x 26.8 cm

1871 Tower Falls

1871 Upper Falls, Yellowstone
watercolour on paper

1871 Yellowstone Canyon

c1871 Great Springs of the Firehole River
watercolour 20.6 x 28.3 cm

1872 Above Tower Falls, Yellowstone
watercolour, gouache on paper 38.1 x 26.7 cm

1872 Big Springs in Yellowstone Park
watercolour 23.5 x 48.9 cm

1872 Cliffs of the Rio Virgin, South Utah
watercolour

1872 Cliffs, Green River, Wyoming
watercolour 15.2 x 27.9 cm

1872 Hot Springs of Gardiner's River
watercolour 51.4 x 72.7 cm

1872 Hot Springs of the Yellowstone
oil on canvas 41.1 x 76.2 cm

1872 Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone
watercolour on paper 36.3 x 26.4 cm

1872 The Devil's Den on Cascade Creek
watercolour 33.3 x 24.5 cm

1872 The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
watercolour 28.6 x 20.3 cm

1872 The Great Hot Springs, Gardiners River
watercolour 21.9 x 44.8 cm

1872 The Hot Springs of Gardiners River, Upper Pools
watercolour 29.8 x 21.6 cm

1872 Tower Falls and Sulphur Mountain, Yellowstone
watercolour 24.1 x 33.7 cm

1872 Tower Falls
watercolour

1872 Wyoming Fall, Yellowstone River
watercolour 33 x 44.4 cm

c1872-75 Summit of the Sierras
gouache on paper 36 x 25 cm

1873 Cliffs of the Rio Virgin, South Utah
watercolour

Thursday, 26 July 2012

Thomas Moran (1837 – 1926) originally from Bolton, England 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 took residence in New York where he obtained work as an artist. A talented illustrator and colourist, Moran was hired as an illustrator at Scribner's Monthly. During the late 1860s, he was appointed the chief illustrator of the magazine, a position that helped him launch his career as one of the premier painters of the American landscape.

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 landscapes made by this group.

Thomas Moran was born in 1837 in Bolton, Lancashire to two handloom weavers. The rapid industrialization of nineteenth century England soon mechanized the weaving process and forced Thomas Moran’s parents out of their jobs, at which point the whole family was moved to Kensington, Philadelphia, just outside of Philadelphia.

At the age of sixteen, Moran became an apprentice to a Philadelphia wood engraving firm, Scattergood & Telfer. It was in this position that he began to paint and draw seriously, working diligently on his skills as both a watercolourist and an illustrator. In this he had help and support from his brother Edward, who was an associate of the marine painter James Hamilton.

In the early 1860s Moran travelled to Lake Superior, where he painted and sketched the landscape of the Great Lakes. Back in Philadelphia he sold lithographs of the Great Lakes before setting off on another trip, this time to London, to see the works of the famed British landscape and marine painter J. M. W. Turner. Thomas Moran replications of his own work so impressed the director of the National Gallery that he was given a private room to work in. Upon returning to the U.S., Moran wanted to go west again and paint but had to wait for the right opportunity.

That opportunity came in the form of Ferdinand V. Hayden’s 1871 Geological Survey Expedition to what is now Yellowstone National Park. Thomas Moran was hired, along with photographer William Henry Jackson, to document the landscape of the region. He could not have chosen a better trip or companion, as the combined talents of Moran and Jackson in documenting the geysers, hot springs, canyons and cliffs of the “Yellow Stone Territory” would be instrumental in persuading Congress to set the land aside as a National Park. It was also the beginning of a fruitful partnership, as Thomas Moran would accompany Jackson again on Major John Wesley Powell’s expedition to the west in 1873.

Moran (centre) on the Powell Expedition

It was as a result of these trips that Thomas Moran painted his two most famous works, “The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone” and “The Chasm of the Colorado,” both of which were purchased (for a previously unheard-of sum of $10,000 each) by Congress to be displayed in the Capitol in Washington. With the money he was earning from his newfound fame, Thomas Moran again travelled to Europe, this time to Venice, where he purchased a gondola and shipped it back to the United States in order to use it as a model for a variety of Venice scenes he produced after 1890.

1872 The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
oil on canvas 213.4 x 365.8 cm

1873-74 The Chasm of the Colorado
oil on canvas 214.3 x 367.6 cm

Thomas Moran moved west permanently in his old age, settling in Santa Barbara, CA and travelling to Acoma and Laguna pueblos to paint the scenery and lifestyle of the native peoples. He died in 1926.

This is part 1 of a 5-part post on the works on the works of Thomas Moran. Works will appear chronologically, but a number of undated works will be in part 5.