“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 this watercolor Thomas Moran portrayed the bases of the soaring cliffs in striations of chocolate brown, coal black, and inky blue, but as they rise upward and rays of sunlight illuminate their upper reaches, a tonal shift occurs to lighter hues of lavender, pale blue, dusky red, dove gray, and soft white. Below the multicolored precipices, the occupants of two boats traverse the waterway as it winds through the vast gorge. Moran’s inclusion of a human element brings us into the image so we can experience a sense of awe and share in the spirit of adventure.

Although the artwork was originally entitled Zion Valley, Moran scholar Joni Kinsey identifies the setting as the Grand Canyon of the Colorado.² Kinsey bases her identification on several factors. The jagged, rough edges of the bluffs in the Grand Canyon differ from the smooth faces of the cliffs in Zion Valley (02.878), and the Grand Canyon is much wider than Zion.³ The Powell expedition that Moran accompanied in 1873 did navigate the waters of the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, but they never put their boats in at Zion Valley’s Virgin River.⁴ Most importantly, Moran’s wood engraving The Grand Cañon of the Colorado, which illustrated Powell’s article about the Grand Canyon expedition for Scribner’s Monthly, appears to be based on this watercolor.⁵

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

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¹ Powell, “The Cañons of the Colorado,” 523.
² Thank you to Moran scholar Joni Kinsey for calling this to the attention of Gilcrease Museum. Dr. Joni Kinsey, email messages to author, September 30, 2020, and February 1, 2021.
³ Another example in the Gilcrease collection is Zion Valley (02.853).
⁴ Wilkins, Thomas Moran: Artist of the Mountains, 115–22.
⁵ Powell, “The Cañons of the Colorado,” 524.