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
Watercolors
Justly celebrated for his panoramic oil paintings of the American West,
Moran was also a master on a much smaller scale, as the watercolors in this
room attest. In Zion Canyon the tiny boats on the surface of the
river are those of John Wesley Powell's 1873 survey expedition. Elegantly
composed and skillfully painted, Moran's image succeeds in conveying both
the grandeur of the landscape and the fragility of the human enterprise
within it.
A later work, In the Lava Beds, completed following Moran's return to the Grand Canyon in 1892, is equally spare in its composition. Against the multicolored walls of the canyon, wisps of smoke slowly rise from an evening campfire. In the foreground a subtle detail--an isolated camera--pays homage to Moran's expedition companion and close friend, the photographer William Henry Jackson.