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
A Western Triptych
In June 1872 Congress appropriated $10,000 for the purchase of the most
important painting to result from Thomas Moran's first trip west,
Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.
On a canvas measuring seven by twelve
feet, Moran created a panoramic view of the golden canyon carved by the
Yellowstone River. The first landscape to enter the Capitol collection, the
painting was hung in Statuary Hall.
Two years later, following a trip to the Grand Canyon in Arizona with celebrated explorer John Wesley Powell, Moran completed a second painting of equal size, Chasm of the Colorado, which was also purchased by Congress and hung in the Capitol.
In 1874, after seeing photographs of a famous Rocky Mountain peak with a cross of snow on its side, Moran journeyed to Colorado to complete the field studies he needed to produce the third of his great western landscapes, Mountain of the Holy Cross. In an attempt to capture a "true impression" of the scene rather than a topographical view, Moran freely invented the foreground waterfall included in his painting. Forthright about his approach, Moran declared: "I place no value upon literal transcripts from Nature. My general scope is not realistic; all my tendencies are toward idealization....Topography in art is valueless."
In 1876, on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of America, Moran wished to exhibit his three large western landscapes together at the much-anticipated Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. His plans were thwarted when Congress refused to lend the two paintings it had purchased for the Capitol. Moran did exhibit Mountain of the Holy Cross, which may be seen in the center of the wall in the photograph at the right.
Together, Moran's three paintings reflect not only the nationalism of nineteenth-century America that sought evidence of divine favor and geographic superiority in magnificent western landscapes, but also the opening rounds of the continuing debate that attempted to balance "progress" and the preservation of "sacred landscapes."
Moran's three great landscapes of the 1870s, his western triptych, are seen together for the first time in this exhibition.