Thomas Moran Artwork Highlights

Seventy-two artworks by Thomas Moran (1837–1926) were chosen for focused study and analysis because they elucidate an aspect of his career, are representative of his collaborative efforts, or reveal his work in a variety of mediums. Each highlighted artwork is accompanied by a short essay providing aesthetic, historical, and personal context. Moran traveled and painted widely, most famously throughout the West in the years following the Civil War, and he is especially known for his monumental canvases of Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and other iconic areas of the region.

1850s / 1860s / 1870s / 1880s / 1890s / early 1900s / mid-19th century - early 20th century

71 Items

Bridge over the Schuylkill, Philadelphia

Bridge over the Schuylkill, Philadelphia displays the young Thomas Moran’s budding talent with a challenging medium, watercolor. Using a limited palette of browns, blues, and greens, Moran deftly portrays an African American man fishing in the calm waters of the Schuylkill River, with the bridge and the Neoclassical architecture of Fairmount Water Works providing the backdrop. Moran made two distinctive choices in creating this image, both potentially emblematic of an appeal to civic pride.

Fairmount Water Works, Philadelphia

From his family’s home in Philadelphia, the young Thomas Moran easily found scenes to challenge his artistic talents, as seen in watercolors such as Bridge over the Schuylkill, Philadelphia (02.798) and this sketch, Fairmount Water Works. Although Moran is best known for his landscapes, the artist did not shun the architectural and engineering wonders of the city. The Fairmount Water Works, housed in buildings inspired by ancient Greco-Roman structures, was one of Philadelphia’s most celebrated technological achievements.

Rural Scene of Trees and Pond

Thomas Moran’s Rural Scene of Trees and Pond is just 3 1/4 by 6 3/8 inches, but contains a detail-laden world within its semicircle-shaped borders. We encounter a ground-level point of view, from which we can explore the various plant life thriving under the trees and at the water’s edge. We do not see the crowning foliage of the trees, but rather are treated to a view of their trunks and lower branches, through which we glimpse a mountain in the distance.

Crescentville

“You need not a period of pupilage in an artist’s studio. . . . let me earnestly recommend to you one Studio which you may freely enter . . . —the Studio of Nature.”¹
—Asher B. Durand

Toothill Bridge, Bolton, Lancashire

When Thomas Moran and his brother Edward (1829–1901) visited Great Britain in 1862, they were there to study art, but it was also a homecoming. The brothers were born in Bolton, England; they emigrated with their family to the United States in 1844, after technological innovations in the textile industries had led to the unemployment of handloom weavers such as their parents.¹ In fact, Friedrich Engels, in his 1845 study of industrialization and its consequences for the working class in Great Britain, noted that Bolton was “among the worst” of the industrial towns, the polluted waterway little more than a “string of stagnant pools” that contributed “to the total pollution of the air.”²

Windsor

During Thomas Moran’s 1862 trip to Great Britain, he had the opportunity to study the works of the British artist J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) at the National Gallery.¹ Turner bequeathed his art to Great Britain and, upon his death, the National Gallery received some 20,098 items, including drawings, prints, and sketchbooks. The critic John Ruskin, who knew Turner and championed his work, catalogued the collection, finishing in 1858.² Thus, at the time of Thomas’s visit to England, he could have viewed not only Turner’s paintings but also his sketchbooks. Family lore relates that one of the attendants at the National Gallery “freely brought paintings by Turner and even drawings” to Moran for copying in a room set up for that purpose.³

Hastings

In the summer of 1862, Thomas Moran and his older brother Edward (1829–1901) traveled to England. Edward enrolled in classes at the Royal Academy of Arts, but Thomas decided to forgo formal training to study the work of J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) at London’s National Gallery.¹ The brothers did not spend all of their time indoors, however. They traveled to their birthplace of Bolton, which Thomas depicted in Toothill Bridge, Bolton, Lancashire (02.801), and then toured the English countryside visiting locations depicted by Turner, such as Hastings.²

Summer on the Susquehanna

What could be more inviting on a summer day than to find a shady spot to rest under a canopy of tree branches? In Summer on the Susquehanna, Thomas Moran used cool blues and deep greens to create a tranquil, restful scene warmed by the sun. Almost obscured in the thick grasses is a figure with a fishing pole heading toward the river, which can be glimpsed in the distance. A path opens up before him, zigzagging around the fallen tree and then out onto the sun-drenched shore.

The Great Aqueduct of the Campagna, Rome

Thomas Moran, accompanied by his wife Mary Nimmo (1842–1899) and their two-year-old son Paul (1864–1907), left the United States in the summer of 1866 for an extended visit to Europe. The family stopped briefly in England, and then spent the remainder of the year in Paris, visiting the numerous art galleries and exhibitions. By February 1867, the family was off to Italy, stopping at art museums from Milan to Naples before settling into life in Rome, where sketching kept Thomas occupied for months.¹

On the Susquehanna

In On the Susquehanna, Thomas Moran deftly captures a pleasant day spent out of doors, with the two figures perched on the rock in the foreground drawing the viewer into the scene.¹ The standing figure casts his fishing line out into the placid, sun-dappled waters of the Susquehanna, while his companion lazily reclines nearby, gazing at the magnificent tree on the opposite shore. There is a timeless quality to the image, and if it were not for the title indicating the location, the two young men could be on almost any river, anywhere.

Solitude

The engaging composition and dramatic contrasts between light and dark make Solitude a wonderful example of Thomas Moran’s accomplishments as a lithographer. The rocky outcropping in the foreground and the winding stream beside it lead our eye to the tree clinging perilously to the shoreline. This pine draws our attention upward to its darker companion, whose canopy it appears to grasp with outstretched limbs in an attempt to halt its descent into the creek. The mountains in the distance stand mute witness to the struggle, while to the right a dying pine appears to be a sign of what is to come. Indeed, the work has been interpreted by Moran scholar Joni Kinsey as a memento mori, a reflection on the inevitability of death.¹

The Giantess

“Standing near the fountain when in motion, and the sun shining, the scene is grandly magnificent; each of the broken atoms of water shining like so many brilliants, while myriads of rainbows are dancing attendance. No wonder, then, that our usually staid and sober companions threw up their hats and shouted with ecstasy at the sight.”¹
—General Henry D. Washburn on “The Giantess"

First Sketch Made in the West at Green River, Wyoming

In 1871, Thomas Moran traveled to the western United States to join geologist Ferdinand Hayden’s expedition to the Yellowstone region. Through careful editing and a judicious use of color, Moran recorded his first impression of the West on a piece of paper measuring a mere 3 3/4 by 8 1/4 inches. To capture the panoramic sweep of the Plains as they stretched out to meet the distant mountain buttes, the artist used a limited palette applied in bands of brown, white, and blue, sparingly highlighted with lavender and pink. Absent in the image, however, is any indication of the train that brought Moran to the area or of the railroad town of Green River.

The Castle Geyser, Firehole River, Yellowstone, Wyoming Ter U.S.A.

It could be the moon or some distant planet that Thomas Moran depicted in The Castle Geyser, so fantastical are the geological features of Yellowstone.¹ Geysers that shoot water hundreds of feet in the air, and the steam that rises from boiling cauldrons of sulfurous water suggest a place not of this world. Yet Moran’s use of soft pastels and rich jewel tones temper any of the more ominous aspects of the scene, transforming it into a wonderland. Moreover, the rainbow in the distance suggests a sense of hope and the promise of treasures to be found in this strange landscape.

The Yellowstone Range, near the Crow Mission

Thomas Moran’s watercolor The Yellowstone Range, near the Crow Mission presents a breathtaking view of a broad valley, the expansiveness of which is only limited by the mountains that rise majestically in the distance.¹ A group of what appear to be Anglo-Americans on horseback enters the scene in the lower right, although they may be the Crow from the nearby reservation. Moran, however, portrays the area as he and his Anglo-American contemporaries wanted to see it—an essentially unoccupied land, free from the crowds in the cities of the eastern United States and the Old World of Europe. Nonetheless, the title of the work suggests that there were others who lived here, hinting at the region’s troubling history.

The Upper Falls of the Yellowstone

In The Upper Falls of the Yellowstone, Thomas Moran portrayed the sparkling, eye-catching quality of the cataract through the skillful application of pure white pigment over the soft gray and light tan hues of the torrent. The patch of rich russet on the cliff face, the silvery gray rocks opposite, and the dusky blue water below provide a striking contrast to the effervescent white of the falls. As our eye is drawn downward with the cascading water, we note a tiny figure perched on the rock in the foreground. This diminutive figure provides a sense of scale and invites the viewer into the scene. The towering falls dwarf us and we stand awestruck before the power of nature. The explosion of the cataract as it plunges downward activates our senses, and we can almost hear the deafening roar of the waterfall and feel the spray on our faces as the mist wafts through the air. Moran portrayed all of this in a surprisingly small painting: the watercolor measures around 10 1/4 by 8 1/4 inches, probably not much larger than the artist’s hand.

Eddy on Rangeley Stream

An avid angler, Thomas Moran visited Maine’s Rangeley Lakes in 1873, creating this ink wash and several other sketches to record his visit.¹ As was sometimes the case, it was only later that he could capitalize on his field work when he secured a commission to illustrate the article “Trout-Fishing in the Rangeley Lakes” for the February 1877 issue of Scribner’s Monthly.² The Rangeley Lakes were popular with anglers in the northeastern United States, particularly those who enjoyed fly-fishing.³ In fly-fishing, according to the article, the best results were obtained when the artificial fly was cast “in the eddy,” the whirlpool that formed in swiftly flowing waterways, such as that depicted in Moran’s Eddy on Rangeley Stream.⁴

The Grand Canyon

“The gorge is black and narrow below, red and gray and flaring above, and crags and angular projections on walls which, cut in many places by side cañons, seem to be a vast wilderness of rocks. . . . We strained our ears for warning of the falls and watched for rocks, or stopped now and then in the bay of a recess to admire the gigantic scenery.”¹ —Major John Wesley Powell on the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River

In the Narrows, Zion Valley, the Gate Keeper

Thomas Moran depicts the extraordinary colors of the American West in this watercolor and pastel sketch, In the Narrows, Zion Valley, the Gate Keeper.¹ Dazzling whites, dusky reds, rosy pinks, and even hints of lavender highlight the dove grays, soft tans, and rich chocolate browns of the cliffs. White quartz sand fused with calcium carbonate, silica, and red iron oxide in varying combinations produces the startling array of colors seen in the sandstone bluffs.² A brilliant blue sky provides the backdrop for the cliffs that rise precipitously from the pale grayish blue of the waterway.

Grand Canyon of the Colorado

Thomas Moran created this sketch when he accompanied Major John Wesley Powell’s 1873 expedition to the Grand Canyon of Arizona.¹ The watercolor admirably captures some of the extraordinary hues of the area, such as the dusky blue gray of the rocks, the brilliant red striations of the canyon walls, and even a touch of bright blue for a pool of water, perhaps left over from a recent rainfall. The most striking feature, however, is the black boulder in the foreground that sits precariously close to the edge of the rock shelf. Although this is a field sketch and probably what Moran observed, the artist’s portrayal of the boulder is intriguing.

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