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THOMAS MORAN (1837–1926) Green River in Wyoming, 1899
Thomas Moran was drawn to the West following a fortuitous commission by Scribner’s Monthly Magazine to amend illustrations to accompany an article titled “The Wonders of Yellowstone.” With the helpful introduction of A. B. Nettleton, office manager of the Northern Pacific Railroad, Moran was invited to accompany F. V. Hayden’s expedition and geological survey of Yellowstone.1
In a catalogue published in conjunction with a landmark exhibition of the works of Thomas Moran, National Gallery of Art Curator Nancy K. Anderson writes:
Yellowstone was Moran’s ultimate destination in the summer of 1871, but before he reached the land of geysers and hot springs, he completed a field study that he later inscribed “First sketch made in the West.” Modest in size, the watercolor study was the first of many that Moran would make of the sculpted and striated cliffs near the railroad town of Green River, Wyoming. Surprised by a landscape unlike any other he had ever seen, Moran may not have immediately known that the lessons of [J. M. W.] Turner and the literature of romance had provided him with the ideal visual vocabulary to turn a hot, dusty, desert landscape into a western Xanadu.
Further describing this unique landscape and its importance to both Western progress and Thomas Moran’s oeuvre, Peter H. Hassrick writes:
Castle 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 Pacific Railroad first bridged the mighty Green River in 1868, and it was here that Thomas 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 manipulated reality with a wash of myth. That 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 bluffs, would endure.2
EXHIBITIONS
• Comer Museum, Sylacauga, Alabama, January 31–February 28, 1983
• The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Jacksonville, Florida, September 14–November 11, 1984
• American Masterpieces from The Warner Collection, Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, January 31–March 29, 1987
• American Traditions: Art from the Collections of Culver Alumni, Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art,
Indianapolis, Indiana, December 12, 1993–March 6, 1994
• Mildred Warner House Museum, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, ca. 1994–2002
• Westervelt Warner Museum of American Art, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 2003–11
• An American Odyssey: The Warner Collection of American Art, New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut, April
1–July 3, 2011
• Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, August 13–November 6, 2011
• Whispering Cliffs, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, December 2011–January 2014
• The Frick Art & Historical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, March 1–May 25, 2014
1 2
Nancy K. Anderson, Thomas Moran, National Gallery of Art, 1997, Washington, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 48. 2016 The Russell Catalogue, C.M. Russell Museum, Great Falls, Montana.