“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

In 1873, Mary Nimmo Moran received a letter from her husband, the artist Thomas Moran (1837–1926), admonishing her to work on her drawing skills while he was away exploring Arizona’s Grand Canyon with Major John Wesley Powell. Moran states that, in addition to his watercolors and oil paintings, he needed drawings for his commercial work, with which Nimmo Moran could assist. Moran’s prodigious commercial output has led scholars to speculate on the degree of his wife’s involvement in his various projects.² It is unclear how much and in what manner she may have helped, as none of the work created to fulfill these commissions acknowledges any role played by Nimmo Moran. The only proof of her contributions are a few tantalizing sentences in this 1873 letter and a handful of examples of commercial work completed in collaboration with her husband, which scholars have either recognized as her work or for which she received credit at the time, such as Landscape after Rousseau (14.103a) and the etching seen here.³

In this etching, Nimmo Moran portrays a diminutive figure, face upraised in wonderment, standing amidst a tangle of trees in a California woodland. The artist executed the print for a commission for the book Picturesque California, which she worked on in partnership with her husband.⁴ The couple had visited California in 1872, and both made field sketches to work up into paintings and etchings.⁵ Nimmo Moran based this etching on one of her husband’s sketches, although that work remains unidentified.⁶ No doubt her memories of the 1872 trip, combined with her talents as an etcher, aided Nimmo Moran in her depiction of the giant, awe-inspiring trees.

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

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¹ Bassford and Fryxell, Home-thoughts from afar, 41–42.
² Morand and Friese, Prints of Nature, 23; Peet, American Women of the Etching Revival, 31–32; Vittoria, “Nature and Nostalgia in the Art of Mary Nimmo Moran,” 71–72, 277.
³ Vittoria, “Nature and Nostalgia in the Art of Mary Nimmo Moran,” 273–74.
Scholars such as Shannon Vittoria credit Nimmo Moran for three etchings after Moran’s paintings for an 1886 sale catalogue of his work. The Catalogue of the Pictures in Oil and Water Colors by Thomas Moran, N.A., Now on Free Exhibition in the Galleries of Messrs. Ortgies & Co. included Nimmo Moran’s The Bathers (after Thomas Moran) (14.118a) (no. 20 in Ortgies), The Edge of the Forest (after Thomas Moran) (14.119a) (no. 12 in Ortgies, also known as In the Woods, Georgica Pond, Long Island), and A Wooded Landscape (after Thomas Moran) (14.121a) (no. 26 in Ortgies). As per Vittoria, the initials “M.N.M” appear in the plates of all three, and the artist signed some impressions in graphite: “M. Nimmo Moran.” Also, the Ortgies catalogue numbers are penciled in the upper left of some impressions. See also Morand and Friese, Prints of Nature, 23; Peet, American Women of the Etching Revival, 32.
⁴ Vittoria, “Nature and Nostalgia in the Art of Mary Nimmo Moran,” 277–79. Gilcrease also owns Moran’s etching The Half Dome — View from Moran Point (14.654) created for Picturesque California.
⁵ Wilkins, Thomas Moran: Artist of the Mountains, 112–13. The Gilcrease collection includes a sketch Nimmo Moran made during the 1872 trip, Mountain, Rocks, Trees (Landscape Yosemite) (02.1647), as well as Moran’s Near Gentry’s, Yosemite (02.847) and Glacier Point from Trail to Vernal Fall (02.835). The National Park Service and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum own the couple’s other sketches from the 1872 trip.
⁶ Vittoria, “Nature and Nostalgia in the Art of Mary Nimmo Moran,” 278. I have also been unable to find a sketch by either of the Morans that corresponds to this etching.