Introduction
Early Years
Yellowstone
Green River
A Western Triptych
Moran and Photography
Turner's Influence
Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon: Late Views
From Long Island to Europe
Watercolors
Final Years

Early Years

Thomas Moran was born in Bolton, England, in 1837, the son of a hand-loom weaver. Moran's parents, seeking economic and educational opportunities for their children, immigrated to America and in 1844 settled near Philadelphia. Shortly after young Thomas completed grammar school, he entered an apprenticeship with a local engraving firm. Restless and dissatisfied, he terminated his contract early and began working in the studio of his older brother Edward, an aspiring artist.

Encouraged by his brother and informally instructed by several Philadelphia painters, Moran began to exhibit accomplished paintings during the early 1860s. His love of literature resulted in a number of "fantasy" pictures, including Salvator Rosa Sketching the Banditti.

Following numerous sketching trips into the forests surrounding Philadelphia, Moran also created meticulously detailed paintings of Pennsylvania forest interiors. These paintings, like Autumnal Woods, testify not only to the artist's technical gifts but also to his interest in the writings of John Ruskin, the famous English critic who championed both the Pre-Raphaelite painters and Britain's greatest landscape artist, J.M.W. Turner. In 1862 Thomas and Edward journeyed to England to study Turner's paintings firsthand. Familiar with his work through prints and engravings, they were especially eager to see Turner's color.

Thomas Moran's most ambitious early picture, Children of the Mountain, though often mistaken for a western landscape, was, in fact, a total invention. The cataracts, clouds, mist, and rainbow--the "children" of the title--were Moran's imaginative creation. Ironically, four years later Moran used the painting as collateral to help finance his first trip west--the trip that changed the course of his career.