Thomas Moran Highlights, mid-19th century - early 20th century
Near Feltville, N.J.
During the summer of 1878, Thomas Moran spent several weeks in and around Feltville, New Jersey, sketching more than a dozen images of the partially abandoned mill town.1 In this ink wash, the artist used gouache for the crisp, white clouds above the building and the reflections in the stream below. Mature trees and lush grasses surround the mill, creating a very different view of a factory town than Moran depicted in his etching Communipaw, N.J. (14.430a-u), or even in a scene from his birthplace in England, Toothill Bridge, Bolton, Lancashire (02.801). Feltville, was, in fact, planned as an alternative to densely populated and polluted industrial towns.
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Moonlight Fete in Venice
Completed during either his 1886 or 1890 sojourn to Venice, this pen and ink study was executed so quickly and effortlessly that in some sections the artist’s pen never left the paper. There is one continuous stroke of the pen for the architecture, another for the gondolas, leaving additional marks to be made only for the sky and water. Although many of the field sketches Thomas Moran created in Venice are quick line drawings, they formed the basis for over sixty-five oil paintings depicting the city of canals, rivaling his portrayal of any other subject in oils, including the American West.1
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Camp in the Mountains
Thomas Moran’s Camp in the Mountains offers a glimpse into his life during sketching expeditions to remote areas. As this oil painting is undated, it could represent any of Moran’s field trips or the combined memory of several. Nonetheless, the composition, the canvas tent, and the mountains in the distance resemble several of the artist’s drawings from his 1874 excursion to the Rocky Mountains.1 For Moran, that journey was a mix of pleasant bivouacs and arduous events. Only the storm clouds rolling in over the snow-covered peaks in this painting hint at the calamities that could occur while trekking through the wilderness.
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Cephalus and Procris
This drawing by Thomas Moran, which probably dates to early in his career, was based on a print from the Liber Studiorum (Book of Studies) series of J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851).1 The influential nineteenth-century British critic, John Ruskin, advised artists to copy prints from Turner’s Liber Studiorum as an adjunct to sketching from nature,2 and Moran biographer Thurman Wilkins relates that Moran traded some of his early watercolors for art books, including several sets of the Liber Studiorum.3
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