Browse: Thomas Moran: The West and the Business of Art

In December 1870, the editor of Scribner’s Monthly, Richard Watson Gilder, faced a dilemma. The magazine had just published its first issue the previous month, and aspired to produce the premier illustrated periodical of its day. Gilder planned for a two-part article, “The Wonders of Yellowstone,” the following year, but the art director thought the drawings provided to accompany the text did not meet the magazine’s standards. Gilder decided to call upon the talents of a childhood friend, Thomas Moran, to improve upon the drawings, even though the artist had never visited the Yellowstone region. There would not be time to arrange a trip, but Gilder knew Moran had begun his career copying other artists’ work for wood engravings at the Philadelphia firm of Scattergood and Telfer. Moreover, Moran had already created a suitable set of illustrations for an article on Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park to be published in Scribner’s January issue. The editor was also aware that Moran was an artist seeking to expand his career and could not afford to turn him down. The art world could be as competitive as the publishing industry, and Moran and his wife, the artist Mary Nimmo Moran (1842–1899), had three children to support.[1]

Moran accepted the commission and prepared fourteen ink washes as the basis for the Yellowstone illustrations. Moran was so intrigued by the imagery that he resolved to visit the region himself. The author of the articles, Nathaniel P. Langford, planned to return to Yellowstone, accompanying Ferdinand V. Hayden on his geological survey of the region. Langford received funding from Jay Cooke, the financier of the Northern Pacific Railroad (NPRR), whose representatives suggested to Hayden that Moran join the group as guest artist. Hayden agreed, and Cooke’s NPRR, along with Scribner’s, funded Moran’s journey. In return, Moran provided illustrative work for Scribner’s, promotional material for the NPRR, and a set of watercolors for Cooke. Moran could not have known at the time that this was a small price to pay for inclusion on the trip. The illustrative work for Scribner’s led to commissions from a variety of periodicals; promotional materials for the NPRR led to work for other railroads; and the watercolors Moran made for Cooke led to a commission for an additional set for another railroad financier, William Blackmore.[2]

In a little over a year, with some help from Gilder, Moran laid the foundation for business connections that could provide an income for his family for decades. Moran had to maintain and expand upon those connections, however, just as the artist found he would need to develop his landscape imagery beyond the West.

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

Click on any of the artworks below to learn more about Moran’s images of the West from throughout his career. For more about Moran’s expanded repertoire, see Thomas Moran: Beyond the West, and for more about his early years, see Thomas Moran: Before the West, an Artist in Training.

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[1] Wilkins, Thomas Moran: Artist of the Mountains, 76–79.

[2] Wilkins, Thomas Moran: Artist of the Mountains, 79–81. See also Kinsey, Thomas Moran and the Surveying of the American West, 50–51, 80.

25 Items

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.

Tower Fall

“Just below our camp the creek makes a semicircular turn and flowing in a succession of cascades for a short distance suddenly dashes over the edge of the precipice and falls one hundred and fifty-six feet to the bottom of the canyon. . . . The rocks, from the action of the weather and the water, have been eroded, so as to leave high towers standing along the banks. . . . as though stationed there to guard it.”¹ —Albert Charles Peale, 1871

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.

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.

Springville Cañon

In 1873, Thomas Moran accompanied Major John Wesley Powell’s expedition to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. The group departed from Salt Lake City but before heading to Arizona, they explored the area in southwest Utah that would become Zion National Park. Moran was one of the first Anglo-American artists to visit and depict the Virgin River region and the many canyons of Zion Valley.¹ The artist later used his sketches to work up illustrations such as this one of Springville Cañon, which appeared in the January 1874 issue of The Aldine.² This was one of five³ based on his Utah sketches that appeared in The Aldine.

Camp in the Mountains

Thomas Moran’s Camp in the Mountains offers a glimpse into his life during sketching expeditions to remote areas. As this oil painting is undated, it could represent any of Moran’s field trips or the combined memory of several. Nonetheless, the composition, the canvas tent, and the mountains in the distance resemble several of the artist’s drawings from his 1874 excursion to the Rocky Mountains.¹ For Moran, that journey was a mix of pleasant bivouacs and arduous events. Only the storm clouds rolling in over the snow-covered peaks in this painting hint at the calamities that could occur while trekking through the wilderness.

Upper End of Cottonwood Canyon

Here, the chilly blue grays, dull browns, and soft tans of the mountains provide a striking backdrop to the rich olive greens of a ragged group of trees and the gleaming white boulders strewn across the hillside. The largest of these boulders dwarfs two diminutive figures huddled at its base. These tiny figures were perhaps intended to represent Thomas and his brother, the artist Peter Moran (1841–1914), as this was their first trip together to the West.¹

Tahoe

When Thomas Moran arrived at Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border in 1879, the area was well on its way to becoming an important site of the region’s leisure industry.¹ As art historian Anne Morand has pointed out, although Moran generally avoided any suggestion of human presence in his images of the American West, this watercolor sketch of Tahoe provides ample evidence of a rapidly developing vacation community.²

San Juan, New Mexico

When working in watercolor, Thomas Moran typically painted wet on dry, but in several sketches created in 1881, such as San Juan, New Mexico, he appears to be experimenting with a wet-on-wet technique.¹ A soft blurring of form in the right foreground and in the landmass above the pond, as well as some pooling of color in the sky, suggests the artist applied the watercolor to wet paper. The crisper lines of the architecture indicate that Moran was working in his usual wet-on-dry-paper method for the buildings.

Española, New Mexico

In autumn 1881, Thomas Moran traveled to Colorado and New Mexico, gathering material to fulfill commissions for Colorado Tourist and Illustrated Guide and for Ernest Ingersoll’s book Crest of the Continent (1885).¹ Moran took the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to Chicago after completing a commission for their travel guide, Picturesque B. & O. (13.1006); he then traveled to Denver, where he transferred to the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, which provided transportation for the Colorado and New Mexico commissions.² When he arrived in Española, New Mexico, Moran seems to have been so taken with the town that he grabbed a sheet of B. & O. stationery left over from his earlier trip and produced this quick watercolor sketch.

Buttes, Green River, Wyoming

Thomas Moran’s depictions of the Green River area number more than one hundred and include oil paintings, etchings, wood engravings, chromolithographs, and sketches.¹ The artist not only portrayed the region frequently but also visited on several occasions, including in 1881 after an exhausting year of travel finding vistas to sketch for three separate commissions. Moran first journeyed to Niagara Falls that year, then traveled to the Virginias and Maryland, with his last trip an excursion through Colorado and New Mexico. Before he headed home to the East Coast, however, he took a detour to Wyoming’s Green River, where he had first sketched the American West a decade earlier.

Mountain of the Holy Cross

For nine months of the year, deep snow on the peak of the highest summit in Colorado’s Sawatch Range hides the natural phenomena that led to the edifice’s name: Mount of the Holy Cross. The enormous cross-like shape on the mountain’s northeast face is only visible in late summer, when the first snow fills the two enormous transverse gullies on the peak. The upright gully is fifteen hundred feet in height, and the arms extend outward three hundred and fifty feet on either side.¹ Thomas Moran was fortunate to view the glistening white cross during a trip to the Rocky Mountains in 1874, a moment he would portray in this etching and an oil painting, Mountain of the Holy Cross (1875).²

Stream from Faithful

Like the famous Yellowstone geyser depicted here, Thomas Moran’s artistic habits could be described as “Old Faithful” for their consistency. When he returned to Yellowstone in 1892, he continued the habit of a lifetime—field sketches with notations. In this drawing, Moran made extensive color notations, perhaps because the hues did not seem possible. Orange to surround the stream from the geyser and more orange on the horizon? The note near the dip in the land, “W. Blue, sunset,” explains the extraordinary colors: Moran was fortunate to witness the Old Faithful geyser erupting at sunset, no doubt a stunning site.

Print C: Grand Cañon of the Colorado River, Arizona

Thomas Moran’s involvement in a variety of commercial enterprises included working with the publishers of chromolithographs and the companies that used their services. Besides providing the artist with supplemental income, chromolithographs brought Moran’s work to an extensive audience.¹ In 1892, the Santa Fe Railroad contracted with the American Lithograph Company and lithographer Gustave H. Buek (1850–1927), to produce a chromolithograph after a painting to be created by Moran.²

Lower Falls, Yellowstone Park

“Mr. Moran is on his way to Yellowstone National Park. He will be accompanied by W. H. Jackson of this city and the world’s fair commissioners for Wyoming, the object of the trip being to secure materials for a large picture to be exhibited at the fair.”¹ —Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO), June 18, 1892

Blue Lakes, Idaho

The rich blue-green hues of these lakes on the Snake River must have pleasantly startled Thomas Moran during his visit to Idaho. We can almost imagine him quickly reaching for his watercolors to create this field sketch. Once he achieved the sapphire and turquoise tones he desired for the water, the artist surrounded the lakes with a detailed contour drawing of the bluffs. Moran visited Idaho during the summer of 1900, accompanied by his daughter Ruth Moran. This was one of his first extended trips away from his home on the East Coast after the death of his beloved wife, the artist Mary Nimmo Moran (1842–1899).¹

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