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

Yellowstone

Thomas Moran saw Yellowstone for the first time in the summer of 1871. A few months earlier he had been asked to rework sketches submitted as illustrations for an article on Yellowstone published in Scribner's Magazine. Titled "The Wonders of Yellowstone," this article was the first extensive description published in the East of the landscape long rumored to be "the place where Hell bubbled up." Moran quickly recognized Yellowstone as a new and exciting "subject for pictures" and within weeks had arranged to join the first government-sponsored survey of Yellowstone, led by geologist Ferdinand V. Hayden.

Traveling across the country aboard the newly completed transcontinental railroad, Moran joined Hayden in Virginia City, Montana. Although he was so thin that he required a pillow on his saddle, Moran quickly adapted to the rigors of the trail and during the next two months produced dozens of watercolor studies that would later serve as the basis for numerous paintings. A selection of Moran's field sketches completed on this trip, the first color images of Yellowstone ever seen in the East, may be seen on the wall to your right.

From his loosely sketched and often broadly painted field studies of this unusual landscape, Moran composed, in his studio, highly structured, exquisitely painted watercolors. A group of these works, commissioned by an English patron, William Blackmore, may be seen on the wall to your left.

Occasionally, Moran created larger watercolor images for exhibition. One of the finest of these, a view of the hot springs on Gardiner's River in Yellowstone, hangs in the center of the room.

Shortly after Moran returned east, Ferdinand Hayden and others (including executives of the Northern Pacific Railroad), began promoting the idea that Yellowstone should be protected and preserved as a "national park." Because no member of Congress had seen Yellowstone, Hayden and his colleagues brought Moran's watercolors to Capitol Hill, along with photographs taken by William Henry Jackson on the 1871 expedition. These images were later reported to have played a decisive role in the debate that led to the establishment of Yellowstone as the nation's first national park in March 1872.