Thomas Moran Highlights, 1860s

12 Items

Rural Scene of Trees and Pond

Thomas Moran’s Rural Scene of Trees and Pond is just 3 1/4 by 6 3/8 inches, but contains a detail-laden world within its semicircle-shaped borders. We encounter a ground-level point of view, from which we can explore the various plant life thriving under the trees and at the water’s edge. We do not see the crowning foliage of the trees, but rather are treated to a view of their trunks and lower branches, through which we glimpse a mountain in the distance.

Crescentville

“You need not a period of pupilage in an artist’s studio. . . . let me earnestly recommend to you one Studio which you may freely enter . . . —the Studio of Nature.”¹
—Asher B. Durand

Toothill Bridge, Bolton, Lancashire

When Thomas Moran and his brother Edward (1829–1901) visited Great Britain in 1862, they were there to study art, but it was also a homecoming. The brothers were born in Bolton, England; they emigrated with their family to the United States in 1844, after technological innovations in the textile industries had led to the unemployment of handloom weavers such as their parents.¹ In fact, Friedrich Engels, in his 1845 study of industrialization and its consequences for the working class in Great Britain, noted that Bolton was “among the worst” of the industrial towns, the polluted waterway little more than a “string of stagnant pools” that contributed “to the total pollution of the air.”²

Windsor

During Thomas Moran’s 1862 trip to Great Britain, he had the opportunity to study the works of the British artist J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) at the National Gallery.¹ Turner bequeathed his art to Great Britain and, upon his death, the National Gallery received some 20,098 items, including drawings, prints, and sketchbooks. The critic John Ruskin, who knew Turner and championed his work, catalogued the collection, finishing in 1858.² Thus, at the time of Thomas’s visit to England, he could have viewed not only Turner’s paintings but also his sketchbooks. Family lore relates that one of the attendants at the National Gallery “freely brought paintings by Turner and even drawings” to Moran for copying in a room set up for that purpose.³

Hastings

In the summer of 1862, Thomas Moran and his older brother Edward (1829–1901) traveled to England. Edward enrolled in classes at the Royal Academy of Arts, but Thomas decided to forgo formal training to study the work of J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) at London’s National Gallery.¹ The brothers did not spend all of their time indoors, however. They traveled to their birthplace of Bolton, which Thomas depicted in Toothill Bridge, Bolton, Lancashire (02.801), and then toured the English countryside visiting locations depicted by Turner, such as Hastings.²

Summer on the Susquehanna

What could be more inviting on a summer day than to find a shady spot to rest under a canopy of tree branches? In Summer on the Susquehanna, Thomas Moran used cool blues and deep greens to create a tranquil, restful scene warmed by the sun. Almost obscured in the thick grasses is a figure with a fishing pole heading toward the river, which can be glimpsed in the distance. A path opens up before him, zigzagging around the fallen tree and then out onto the sun-drenched shore.

The Great Aqueduct of the Campagna, Rome

Thomas Moran, accompanied by his wife Mary Nimmo (1842–1899) and their two-year-old son Paul (1864–1907), left the United States in the summer of 1866 for an extended visit to Europe. The family stopped briefly in England, and then spent the remainder of the year in Paris, visiting the numerous art galleries and exhibitions. By February 1867, the family was off to Italy, stopping at art museums from Milan to Naples before settling into life in Rome, where sketching kept Thomas occupied for months.¹

On the Susquehanna

In On the Susquehanna, Thomas Moran deftly captures a pleasant day spent out of doors, with the two figures perched on the rock in the foreground drawing the viewer into the scene.¹ The standing figure casts his fishing line out into the placid, sun-dappled waters of the Susquehanna, while his companion lazily reclines nearby, gazing at the magnificent tree on the opposite shore. There is a timeless quality to the image, and if it were not for the title indicating the location, the two young men could be on almost any river, anywhere.

Solitude

The engaging composition and dramatic contrasts between light and dark make Solitude a wonderful example of Thomas Moran’s accomplishments as a lithographer. The rocky outcropping in the foreground and the winding stream beside it lead our eye to the tree clinging perilously to the shoreline. This pine draws our attention upward to its darker companion, whose canopy it appears to grasp with outstretched limbs in an attempt to halt its descent into the creek. The mountains in the distance stand mute witness to the struggle, while to the right a dying pine appears to be a sign of what is to come. Indeed, the work has been interpreted by Moran scholar Joni Kinsey as a memento mori, a reflection on the inevitability of death.¹

Spruce Creek

“I must know the rocks and the trees and the atmosphere and the mountain torrents . . .”¹
—Thomas Moran

Palace of the Caesars, Rome

Thomas Moran created at least five sketches of the Palace of the Caesars during his 1867 trip to Italy.¹ Here, clouds drift in from the left and move across the sky to suggest the passage of time, while the ancient palace with its crumbling stonework yields to the ravages of the centuries. What perhaps fascinated Moran about the site was the almost organic quality of the buildings, which seem to have sprung spontaneously out of the hillside, only to return to nature upon being abandoned by their human occupants.

Pines in the Villa Borghese, Rome

At first glance, we might wonder why this is entitled Pines in the Villa Borghese, Rome as it appears that only a single pine tree fills the central portion of the page; however, a closer look reveals another pine faintly outlined in the background. Thomas Moran made this sketch with various shades of brown wash during his visit to Rome in 1867. Although merely a sketch—and one that might seem incomplete, as art historian Joni Kinsey has observed—these pines became a source of inspiration for a variety of later works¹, including Solitude (14.635), a lithograph Moran made in 1869, two years after he returned to the United States.²

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