Mary Nimmo Moran Artwork Highlights

Eighteen artworks by Mary Nimmo Moran (1842–1899) were chosen for focused study and analysis, and each one is accompanied by a short essay providing aesthetic, historical, and personal context. Although she made fewer artworks than her husband, Thomas, she was a significant artist in her own right, especially as a printmaker in the 1880s and 1890s.

18 Items

Print A: Conwy Castle

Mary Nimmo Moran took an unusual compositional approach to her depiction of Wales’s Conwy Castle. The fortress, in the middle ground, and the sailing vessels, in the foreground, occupy almost the same amount of pictorial space, and the artist lavished detail on both. Thus, despite the title, we are unsure which is the subject of the work. Our eyes move back and forth, exploring both the citadel and skiffs almost simultaneously. The boats look to be in good repair, most probably contemporary vessels still in use, although they hark back to older sailing traditions. The stone walls of the citadel appear well maintained, the structure possibly still serviceable although it dates to the thirteenth century, far older than the wooden boats. Both are from a preindustrial age, however, and that seems to be the point—this was an old world that a new age had not yet intruded upon.

Print A: Bridge over the Delaware, Easton, Pa.

“In 1879, my husband going on an expedition to the then unexplored Yellowstone Country advised my taking up etching during his absence and during that summer I etched six plates taking them directly from nature and working entirely out of doors.”¹ —Mary Nimmo Moran

Print A: East Hampton Barrens

The title of this etching, East Hampton Barrens, alludes to the broad, seemingly desolate stretch of sand depicted in the foreground. Mary Nimmo Moran’s portrayal of the plants that manage to grow on these windswept dunes, however, suggests there is life here. The trees to our right create a windbreak for the building peeking out to the side. A solitary figure approaches on the horizon, drawing us back to another arboreal line, behind which is one of the town’s windmills.¹ Nimmo Moran transforms what may at first appear a bleak landscape into a place where humans and nature have found the means to coexist.

Print A: Cochrane's o'the Craig, Strathaven

Born in Strathaven, Scotland, Mary Nimmo Moran immigrated with her family to the United States when she was ten. The artist returned to visit her birthplace in 1882 and created this etching, Cochrane’s o’the Craig, Strathaven, which is perhaps evocative of childhood memories of thatched-roofed cottages on the banks of the Avon Water.¹ Her husband, artist Thomas Moran (1837–1926), accompanied her on this trip, and his etching depicting Strathaven Castle (14.393c) shows the area from a different point of view.

Print J: In the Sandhills

A path between the dunes leads us into this scene of a blustery day at the beach. As we follow the trail back, we notice the silhouette of a woman standing by a fence that separates her from the sea. Clouds roll in above her and a darkening sky presses down ominously on the horizon. We can see sheets of rain in the distance, and although the full fury of the storm is approaching, the woman stands rooted in place, transfixed by the power of nature.

Print B: The Goose Pond, East Hampton

In the etching The Goose Pond, East Hampton, a small path on the right leads us into the trees, where we see geese gather and feed in the reeds. Some birds have taken to the pond, and the waters lead us back to another line of trees that directs us to the opposite shore. There we explore the features of the rustic windmill, and as our gaze moves upward, we see great, whirling masses of clouds in the sky.

Print A: A Glimpse of Conwy

Sheltered under the towering trees that dwarf her diminutive size, a young girl gazes out across the waterway before her. In the background, Wales’s Conwy Castle rises, a dreamlike apparition behind its stalwart walls.¹ Curiously, the child seems more interested in what lies out beyond the quay rather than the impressive medieval fortress. What adventures might await anyone daring enough to venture across the waters?

Print F: Tween the Gloaming and the Mirk

Come all ye jolly shepherds,
That whistle through the glen,
I’ll tell you o’ a secret
What is the greatest bliss
That the tongue o’ man can name?
’Tis to woo a bonnie lassie
When the kye come hame.

Print G: Evening on the St. Johns River, Florida

Mary Nimmo Moran’s Evening on the St. Johns River, Florida presents a striking view of the twilight hour, as the sun descends through the clouds and a flatboat glides across the waterway toward shore.¹ Silhouetted against the evening sky, pines draped with Spanish moss create an ambience of tropical ease. Flanking the towering pines are palm trees of less lofty height, and the uneven tree line generates long, undulating shadows in the water, enhancing the mood of nightfall.

Print B: A California Forest (after Thomas Moran)

“Work hard to improve your drawing dear as I shall have plenty of work for you this coming winter. 70 drawings for Powell, 40 for Appleton, 4 for Aldine, 20 for Scribners all from this region beside the water colors and oil pictures.”¹ —Thomas Moran in a letter to Mary Nimmo Moran, 1873

Print A: Landscape after Rousseau

In this etching, Mary Nimmo Moran captures the spirit of the works of the French Barbizon artists and one of the group’s founding members, Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867). We must look carefully for the figures bending to collect reeds at the edge of the pond, so skillfully are they integrated into the composition. This suggestion of the oneness of humanity with nature was a hallmark of the Barbizon group, and their imagery became popular with collectors in the second half of the nineteenth century as a reminder of a simpler life and an antidote to an increasingly industrialized world.

Print C: A City Farm, New York

Urban scenes are an anomaly in the etched works of Mary Nimmo Moran, but A City Farm, New York is not your typical view of metropolitan life. In the foreground, a figure leads a horse-drawn cart laden with produce, and the field from which such bounty came stretches out behind them. Between the rows of what appear to be cabbages, several figures bend to their work of tending the crop. A rambling series of rustic buildings suggests additions to the original homestead. These older structures serve as a line of demarcation separating farm from city. The artist employed a light hand to delineate the orderly line of townhomes springing up all around this city farm.

Print B: Point Isabel, Florida

“Scarcely a tree or shrub shades the solitary spot and the barren wave-washed strand presents the appearance of supreme desolation. Treated by a less skilled hand, the scene would be tiresome, monotonous, and lacking in interest. Instead, it bears the stamp of originality and is imbued with a strong poetic sentiment.”¹ —A. De Montaigu on Mary Nimmo Moran’s Point Isabel, Florida

Print D: The Haunted House, East Hampton

The subject of The Haunted House, East Hampton by Mary Nimmo Moran is a departure from her delightful depictions of rural life in the village, such as The Goose Pond, East Hampton (14.88b).¹ The abandoned home portrayed here stood at the top of a small knoll called “Pudding Hill,” a nickname it was given during the American Revolution after a woman threw out a pot of pudding rather than hand it over to British troops stationed in the village.² Art historian Shannon Vittoria notes that a year after Nimmo Moran executed this print, developers tore the building down to make room for new housing, so perhaps the artist wanted to preserve the memory of a historical site. A partially erased pencil notation on one impression reads: “of colonial days, East Hampton, L.I.”³

Print A: Under the Oaks - Georgica Pond

Under the Oaks — Georgica Pond is one of Mary Nimmo Moran’s few ventures into producing etched works on a large scale. The plates used for most of the artist’s etchings measure around 7 1/2 by 11 1/2 inches. The plate for this work, however, measures a surprising 19 3/8 by 30 3/4 inches. Nimmo Moran liked to etch outdoors directly from nature, and she preferred using small plates easily held in her hands.¹ Moreover, etched works became popular with collectors because of their small size: the owner could hold the print while closely examining all of its intricacies. By the late 1880s, however, the fondness for small etchings waned among collectors, and larger works for prominent display in the home became the trend.²

Sketchbook late 19th century: Easton, July 29, 1879

This sketch served as the preparatory drawing for one of Mary Nimmo Moran’s first etchings,
Bridge over the Bushkill, Easton, Pa. (14.71a), and she may have created both on the same day, preferring to sketch and etch directly from nature.¹ In Easton, July 29, 1879, the artist made several sketches on a sheet of paper: the primary drawing is of the bridge and adjacent building with some foliage, and to its right are the trees and grasses presented from a different perspective. Below the latter are two very faint drawings in which Nimmo Moran works out the curvature of the bridge’s arch.

Sketchbook late 19th century: House, Pond, People

In this drawing, a woman stands, hands on hips and lower back, perhaps stretching after getting up, and a variety of items lie scattered on the ground at her feet. She gazes over at two youngsters sitting by a pond, and in the distance is a building framed by a curtain of trees. The scene may depict the artist Mary Nimmo Moran portraying herself during a significant summer for her artistic career. Although already an accomplished painter, Nimmo Moran began exploring another medium—etching—while her husband, the artist Thomas Moran (1837–1926), was away on a trip to the western United States.¹

Untitled [landscape]

“Thomas Moran the etcher, and Mary Nimmo, his wife, work side by side down in their studio on Twenty-second Street. Big tables near the light, on which are laid the plates while the artists are at work, are an important feature of their furnishings; but there are easels too, for before either of them was an etcher they were painters.”¹ —Elizabeth Bisland, The Cosmopolitan, 1889

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