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

Pictured Rocks of Lake Superior

In 1860 Thomas Moran took his first sketching trip outside his home base in Philadelphia, to Michigan’s Lake Superior. Moran may have been drawn to the area because of the popularity of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, first published in 1855.¹ Pictured Rocks was the setting for the poem’s fictive account of the Ojibway leader Hiawatha’s life, including his marriage to Minnehaha of the Dacotah, a union that brought peace to the two warring tribes.²

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.

Hiawatha and the Serpents

And Nokomis, the old woman,
Pointing with her finger westward,
Spake these words to Hiawatha:
“Yonder dwells the great Pearl-Feather,
Megissogwon, the Magician,
Manito of Wealth and Wampum,
Guarded by his fiery serpents,
Guarded by the black pitch-water.
You can see his fiery serpents,
The Kenabeek, the great serpents,
Coiling, playing in the water;
You can see the black pitch-water
Stretching far away beyond them,
To the purple clouds of sunset!”¹

A Southerly Wind, East Hampton

A hunter sets out with his rifle on a blustery day in Thomas Moran’s etching A Southerly Wind, East Hampton. This is nature animated through the use of curving lines and circle-like forms, which Moran employed throughout the composition to suggest the wind whirling and sweeping across the land. The artist repeats the semicircular form of the hill on the right in the cloud mass above the hunter. The thicket of trees to the left, as well as each individual tree in the grouping, also picks up on the circular shape. By depicting a rounded concentration of low-lying plants in the middle ground, directly below the hunter, and again in the central foreground, Moran suggests additional semicircles.

Print A: The Resounding Sea

“Rarely do we think of paper as anything other than a material of pure utility, a marvel of happenstance that functions best when attracting no attention whatsoever to itself.”¹ —Nicholas A. Basbanes, On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History, 2013

A Picnic

A woman in a long hoopskirt dress stands by two figures reclining on a blanket set with food and utensils. All the elements of a picnic are present in this drawing by Thomas Moran. A leafy tree to the left and a stout tree trunk on the right frame the scene, with a larger, lush tree dominating the middle ground. Additional figures walk on a path leading down from the picnic site to a waterway; perhaps they will join the people on the hillside for the feast, or perhaps they are a separate party. On the waterway, we can see a boat near a dock. As our gaze continues back, we notice a bridge in the middle ground and what appears to be a town clinging to the hillside in the distance. The artist has included a plethora of details in this charming scene, all on a piece of paper a little over nine inches in diameter!

Print A: The Empty Cradle

Thomas Moran based this etching on a photograph taken by John K. Hillers (1843–1925).¹ Moran and Hillers accompanied Major John Wesley Powell’s 1873 expedition to Arizona’s Grand Canyon, and Hillers took the photograph while the group camped at Kanab, Utah. The etching by Moran is an example of the artist producing a finished work based on a photograph by someone else. As painter-printmaker Nancy Friese points out, Moran did not precisely copy photographs taken by others when creating etchings, but used them as a reference.²

St. Johns River, Florida

In his etching St. Johns River, Florida, Thomas Moran presents a rather refined view of the region: the waterway is lined with stately buildings, and boats hug the shoreline in a well-organized manner.¹ Even the palm trees seem to queue up in an orderly fashion, their canopies held dutifully erect. Barely a breeze ruffles the waterway or disturbs the majestic palms, which imparts a sense of stillness that might suggest the stifling heat of late summer.

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.

Print C: Strathaven Castle - Scotland

Thomas Moran and his wife, the artist Mary Nimmo Moran (1842–1899), traveled to Europe in 1882. For Mary it was an opportunity to visit her birthplace of Strathaven, Scotland, and for Thomas an opportunity to create sketches of the town’s castle, which he later worked up into the etching seen here. To provide a more expansive view of the ruins for the etching, Moran changed the vertical orientation of one drawing (13.774) to horizontal.¹

Conwy Castle

In this watercolor sketch by Thomas Moran, the crenelated towers of Conwy Castle float apparition-like amidst expanses of ivory sky, blue water, and gray-green land. The only signs of human habitation are the masts of the sailing ships in the bay. Located on an estuary at the mouth of the River Conwy near the coast of northern Wales, the town and citadel date to the thirteenth century, the fortress built during the conquest of Wales by Britain’s King Edward I.¹

Pass at Glencoe Scotland

Although the mist partially obscures our view of the Scottish Highlands, it cannot hide the wonderful interplay of dusky hues in this stunning watercolor by Thomas Moran.¹ The work depicts the bridge over the River Coe, which flows through a glen hemmed in by steep cliffs that are surrounded by even loftier mountain peaks. Moran leads us into the image via the river, its blue-gray waters rimmed by rocks topped with the golden tans and russet browns of peat moss. The waterway directs our attention to the bridge, where a horse-drawn carriage exits the stone span just as a herd of cattle followed by a cowherd begins to cross.² The stagecoach probably departed from Glencoe, the small village that lies between the bridge and mountains. Although we cannot see the town, and fog enshrouds the mountains, we can discern small rivulets on the hillsides as they wend their way down to the Coe. Glencoe is sometimes referred to as the “weeping valley,” a reference to the town’s history rather than its topography, for this is the site of the massacre of the MacDonalds in 1692.³

An Apple Orchard - East Hampton, L.I.

A tangle of tree branches that have shed their leaves, empty wooden crates on the ground, and a lone ladder suggest that the autumnal activity of apple picking has come and gone. The workers have departed, the orchard is empty, and Thomas Moran has made the trees his primary focus. This modest subject may seem an interesting choice for an artist best known for his majestic images of the western United States, such as the Grand Canyon (see, for example, The Grand Canyon, 01.2351); however, Moran’s simple scenes of life in East Hampton, Long Island, account for about a quarter of his etchings. Moran and his wife, the artist Mary Nimmo Moran (1842–1899), made their home on East Hampton for part of the year, and the locale features prominently in her works, such as The Goose Pond, East Hampton (14.88b).¹

Sunrise - The Pond, East Hampton, L.I.

Thomas Moran chose a panoramic view to depict this glorious dawn over East Hampton, Long Island. This stunning vista includes broad flatlands and a calm waterway that stretch out to the horizon, where the rising sun breaks through the clouds. The road is worn and rutted, but as we take in the breathtaking scene before us, the prospect of our journey into the new day is a welcoming one.¹

Cortés Tower, Mexico

Above a steep, rocky gorge topped with lush, green vegetation stands the gleaming tower of the Palace of Cortés. Located in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and constructed in the 1530s, the palace and its tower are among the oldest structures built by Europeans in the Americas.¹ Thomas Moran depicted the edifice in radiant white highlighted with soft tans, touches of lavender, and even a blush of pink. The artist used a similar pastel palette in the light-suffused sky above the tower to counter the inky blue storm clouds gathering over the canyon. Moran based the painting on sketches completed during a trip he took through Mexico in 1883.²

Sunday Morning, Maravatío

When Thomas Moran visited Mexico in 1883, he was captivated by the municipality of Maravatío,¹ a refreshing oasis of green that lies in an arid plain between the capital of Mexico City and the silver mines of San Luis Potosí. Depicted in this watercolor sketch is the parish church of San Juan Bautista, its magnificent campanario (bell tower) recognizable for miles around. San Juan Bautista was built during the eighteenth century, the great era of parish church construction in Mexico, when lavish architectural embellishments were common, most notably on the entryway.²

The Peak of Orizaba from Esperanza

“We reached Esperanza at two o’clock. This point is some 12000 feet above Vera Cruz and here we had a fine view of the snow covered peak rising about 5000 feet above us against an intensely blue sky. It was a grand sight.”¹ —Thomas Moran in a letter to Mary Nimmo Moran, 1883

Print A: Communipaw, N.J.

Communipaw, N.J. is a rare example of Thomas Moran portraying an industrial scene.¹ Signs of human activity appear primarily on the horizon: the tall masts of ships huddle together on the right; dominating the center is a factory belching thick plumes of black smoke into the air; and on the left a dock juts out into the waterway. Moran uses the foreground to convey the sense of a vast wasteland where pools of water lie still and stagnant, going nowhere.

Print A: The Castle of San Juan de Ulúa, Veracruz, Mexico

“Vera Cruz is a most interesting and picturesque town. . . . The city with its numerous churches, from the ship looked much like Venice.”¹ —Thomas Moran in a letter to Mary Nimmo Moran, 1883

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