Thomas Moran (1837­–1926) became best known for his images of the American West, but there is more to his artistic career. Between accompanying Ferdinand V. Hayden’s geological survey of the Yellowstone region in 1871 and traveling with John Wesley Powell to the Grand Canyon of Arizona in 1873, Moran made a brief trip to Maine.[1] The artist went to Rangeley Lakes, and although he enjoyed trout fishing, his focus was securing patrons. No commissions were forthcoming, but four years later Moran created several illustrations for Scribner’s Monthly based upon drawings he made on that trip. Also, sandwiched between his initial western excursions and the trip to Maine, Moran produced several illustrations of the Pictured Rocks of Lake Superior for The Aldine. He based these wood engravings upon sketches he made a decade earlier, when he visited the Great Lakes.[2] This was to be the artist’s pattern for decades—extensive travel interspersed with periods of productive studio work.

Moran took sketching trips throughout the United States. In addition to the American West, Maine, and the Great Lakes, he traveled to Florida, Niagara Falls, and the Virginias to fulfill commissions for magazines and travel guides. Trips to Mexico yielded numerous sketches, from which he later made etchings and paintings. The artist was enchanted by the Mexican port of Veracruz because it reminded him of Venice, although he had never been to the European city of canals. When Moran first visited Mexico in 1883, he only knew Venice through the work of British artist J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851), whose paintings and prints he had long admired. When he finally visited Venice himself a few years later, in 1886, the region became a particular favorite. Not only did Moran find the city, with its shimmering canals and stately architecture, a joy to sketch, but he worked those drawings up into etchings and paintings that sold well in the United States.[3]

Moran was always on the lookout for new vistas to portray, and if the resulting works were popular—and therefore profitable—so much the better. He also seemed to delight in his adventures, as suggested by his letters to his wife and fellow artist, Mary Nimmo Moran (1842–1899).[4] Once back home, as previously noted, Moran used his drawings as the inspiration for finished works, sometimes years later. His preliminary sketches became the source of works in a range of mediums, including wood engravings, lithographs, etchings, watercolors, and oil paintings. The drawings also provided inspiration for subjects we might call “fantasies.” His artistic imagination allowed Moran to travel “beyond the West” in paintings such as his Seascape (see below) of 1924 or his Hiawatha and the Serpents (see below) from 1875. These fanciful works rely on Moran’s knowledge and experience of the known world, which he had carefully recorded in his sketchbooks. By combining a cave or a canyon sketched from an actual location with imagery of serpents or shipwrecks summoned up from his imagination, Moran created a fantasy that was grounded in reality.

Click on any of the images below to learn more about the wide variety of locales beyond the West, real and imagined, portrayed by Moran in a variety of mediums. He did sometimes travel with his wife, and for more information on his depictions of locations they visited together, see Thomas Moran and Mary Nimmo Moran: Partners in Art.

—Sandra Pauly, Henry Luce Foundation Curatorial Scholar for Moran Collection Research, 2021

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[1] Anderson et al., Thomas Moran, 197, 207.

[2] Anderson et al., Thomas Moran, 205; and Friese, “The Painter as Printmaker with Descriptions of Thomas Moran’s Techniques,” 48–49. Moran was more directly engaged in the production of illustrative work than other artists, which allowed him more control of the finished product. An artist usually gave his drawings to a publisher, and a copyist transferred the drawings to a boxwood block, which was then carved by the engraver. Moran had worked as a copyist when he was an apprentice at Scattergood and Telfer in 1853; because he was skilled at drawing on the wood block, he continued the practice when he received commissions for periodicals.

[3] Strengths of the Moran holdings at Gilcrease include the extensive collection of Moran’s field sketches as well as the finished works based upon them. Of particular interest are his images of Mexico and Venice, since there are a number of drawings and preliminary washes to compare with the finished paintings. Moreover, he created several etchings of Mexico and Venice based upon his oil paintings. Translating the vivid colors of an oil painting into the black-and-white imagery of an etching is a challenging task, and one at which Moran excelled.

[4] Moran’s letters to his wife can be found in Bassford and Fryxell, Home-thoughts from afar.