Not all of Thomas Moran’s field sketches were created aboveground, as seen here. For In Luray Cave, the artist used a few lines to suggest a path leading us into the cave, where a well-dressed woman stands near one of the towering stalagmites. As our eyes are drawn upward by the soaring columns, we discover that some of the lines that define them appear to extend beyond the page, suggesting the cavern’s dizzying heights.

After its discovery in 1878, Virginia’s Luray Cave (known today as Luray Caverns) rapidly became a popular tourist destination. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad hoped to capitalize on this, as well as other attractions along its routes, in a book featuring its scenic lines through Maryland and the Virginias, with Moran supplying the illustrations.¹ The artist, who was treated to a private car on the train, spent late July and early August 1881 creating sketches of various sites throughout the Shenandoah Valley. When the B. & O. arrived in Staunton, Virginia, the artist was joined by his wife, the artist Mary Nimmo Moran (1842–1899). The couple continued on to nearby Luray to see the town’s newly discovered cave, and it may have been Mary whom Thomas depicted standing amidst Luray Cave’s wonders.²

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

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¹ Wilkins, Thomas Moran: Artist of the Mountains, 205–8. Moran created seventy illustrations for J. G. Pangborn’s Picturesque B. & O. The Gilcrease owns a number of Moran’s sketches from the trip as well as a few of the wood engravings for the publication. A sampling of sketches includes View in the Narrows, Cumberland B. & O. (02.896), Angel Wing, Fallen Column and Saracen Den, Luray Cave (02.897), Harpers Ferry (13.1002), and Harpers Ferry (13.1004). The wood engravings include Street in Harpers Ferry (15.407), Luray Cave, Virginia (15.420.a-b), Palisades on the Potomac (15.401), and On Cranberry Grade (15.424). The wood engravings appear in Picturesque B. & O. on pp. 35, 97, 121, 137.
² Wilkins, Thomas Moran: Artist of the Mountains, 208. At the time of the Morans’ visit, much of the cave was not open to tourists, although paths, guardrails, and electric lighting had been installed in several of the passages.