Thomas Moran Highlights, 1880s
Print D: Long Island Landscape
East Hampton, Long Island, home to Thomas Moran and his wife Mary Nimmo Moran (1847–1899), provided both artists with a variety of subjects to portray.1 The rustic charms of East Hampton and its quaint nooks and crannies inspired Moran to produce images such as An Apple Orchard — East Hampton, L.I. (14.423), and Nimmo Moran to create Under the Oaks — Georgica Pond (14.123a). It was a simple, rural life, but one the fierce storms blowing in from the Atlantic could disrupt. Turbulent weather could be a subject, providing an energizing challenge for both artists, as seen in Nimmo Moran’s In the Sandhills (14.85j) and here in Moran’s Long Island Landscape.
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In Luray Cave
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.
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The Niagara River from Brock Monument
In the sketch The Niagara River from Brock Monument, our focus is on the river, waterfall, and clouds because Thomas Moran has used white gouache to highlight those features.1 His application of gouache varies—heavier in the river, lighter in the cascade—so the water is like a solid ribbon that vaporizes into mist. For the sky, a thick application of sparkling white creates the towering tops of the clouds as they build over the darker wash used for the gathering storm, reinforcing the idea of the powerful, transformative forces at work below in the falls.
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Buttes, Green River, Wyoming
Thomas Moran’s depictions of the Green River area number more than one hundred and include oil paintings, etchings, wood engravings, chromolithographs, and sketches.1 The artist not only portrayed the region frequently but also visited on several occasions, including in 1881 after an exhausting year of travel finding vistas to sketch for three separate commissions. Moran first journeyed to Niagara Falls that year, then traveled to the Virginias and Maryland, with his last trip an excursion through Colorado and New Mexico. Before he headed home to the East Coast, however, he took a detour to Wyoming’s Green River, where he had first sketched the American West a decade earlier.
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