Page 88 - TheRussellCatalogue2016

113THOMAS MORAN (1837–1926) Castle Rock, Green River, WyomingCastle Rock, a geological wonder that rises above Wyoming’s Green River, lies at one of the West’s most complex junctures, the intersection between two enormously sublime phenomena, a remarkable example of nature’s spectacle and an example of man’s extraordinary technology. It was here that the Union Paci c Railroad rst bridged the mighty Green River in 1868, and it was here that omas Moran, on his initial trip west, stopped to head north into the untrammeled Yellowstone region. So memorable was this location for the artist that he returned to the site and the subject time and time again.Moran was happy to avail himself of the comfort and convenience of the new transcontinental railway, but he was loath to o er that incredible industrial wonder a place in his art. Instead, the artist focused on the pictorial majesty of the thrusting, sculptured rock monoliths that jutted skyward above the river. It was 1871, and the scene became the subject of Moran’s rst western study (Gilcrease Museum). at watercolor, totally devoid of man’s presence and tinted only slightly with lavenders and pinks, would be the genesis of a lifetime body of work. Numerous Moran Green River depictions survive today in major museum collections across the country from a gorgeous 1872 watercolor in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston to an 1881 masterwork oil of the subject in the National Gallery of Art.In his subsequent Green River paintings, Moran substituted Indians for the town of Green River and the adjacent railroad tracks. e Indians who cross the waters beneath the escarpment in Castle Rock were symbols of a virgin, Edenic America, while the tracks and town were emblems of progress. By subverting the latter and replacing them with the former, Moran manipulated reality with a wash of myth. at myth of an unspoiled wilderness in the West was vastly popular with eastern audiences and collectors. Beyond acclaim and sales, Moran wanted the public to know that while the West as a frontier would gradually disappear, its grandeur as a place, summarized in the magnitude of these Green River sandstone blu s, would endure.Moran passed the Green River cli s many times on his frequent travels west by rail. Clark says that this enduring and engaging motif became for him something of a “rite of passage to the West” as an artist, “one with imagery freshly renewed on almost every western journey.” In 1906, for example, he stopped for several days to speci cally sketch this area. is was perhaps in preparation for painting Castle Rock.In his early work, Moran had been strongly in uenced by the English esthete and painter, John Ruskin. A proponent of Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics, Ruskin insisted on clear replication of nature’s elements. As time progressed, Moran fell more strongly under the sway of J. M. W. Turner, whose landscapes displayed a generally limpid, diaphanous atmosphere and luminous palette. ese became Moran’s later models. Moran’s landscapes after the turn of the century re ected an emotive response to western scenery, one that mirrored French literary giant Emile Zola’s call for presenting nature in art as through a very personalized temperament. e reverential, glowing tone to this work is almost elegiac, perhaps re ecting his private sense of the West’s passing and the tragic loss that year, 1907, of his only son, Paul. If that might be true, the painting Castle Rock is at once an elegant, gentle, and powerful tribute to both. e oil was included in omas Moran’s memorial exhibition in Los Angeles in 1937.Peter H. Hassrick, Director Emeritus and Senior Scholar Bu alo Bill Center of the West