People & Events
Thomas Moran (1837 - 1926)
Towards the end of his life, the painter Thomas Moran wrote: "It has
often occurred to me as a curious and anomalous fact, that American artists are
prone to seek the subjects for their art in foreign lands, to the almost entire
exclusion of their own.... That there is a nationalism in art needs no proof.
It is bred from a knowledge of and sympathy with [one's own] surroundings and
no foreigner can imbue himself with a spirit of a country not his own.
Therefore he should paint his own land...." As a young man, Moran did just
what he admonished other artists for doing: he went to Europe to study painting
and find inspiration. But at the end of his prolific career he was more
closely associated with the landscapes of the American West than almost any
other painter.
Moran first achieved national recognition for the work he created while
accompanying a geological and geographic survey headed by Ferdinand V. Hayden.
In the late 19th century, the U.S. government made the surveying of Western
territory an integral part of its domestic policy. Washington wanted to
investigate the West with a view to promoting settlement and commerce and
exploiting natural resources. From 1867-1879, the Federal government
supported four Great Surveys, each extremely ambitious in scope; each expected
to provide a comprehensive written report, accompanied by visual materials.
Hayden's own instructions from the Secretary of the Interior were "to secure as
full materials as possible for the illustration of your final report, such as
sketches, photographs, etc."
Hayden hired Moran in 1871, during the fifth year of his survey, to help
provide the visual documentation Congress required. When Moran joined the team
it was on its way to Yellowstone. The work the artist created on the trip
would ultimately help transform the region from a hellish place into one of
awesome beauty in the public's imagination. Additionally, as a "Harper's
Weekly" article from the time indicated, his initial sketches almost certainly
played a role in convincing Congress that the region should be turned into a
National Park. "A Bill of importance has passed the House of Representatives,"
stated the March 1872 story, "and [it] will undoubtedly become a law.... Those
who had been so fortunate as to see the original sketches by the artists who
accompanied Dr. Hayden know how very beautiful as well as interesting the
phenomena of the region are." Shortly after Yellowstone was named the first
National Park of the United States, Moran's huge seven-by-twelve foot painting
"The Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone" was unveiled. Congress paid
$10,000 for the oil in 1872 and hung it in the Capitol. This rich and powerful
painting catapulted Moran to national prominence.
Two years later, Congress paid $10,000 for another Moran painting and hung it
opposite the first. This equally massive work titled "The Chasm of the
Colorado" was the result of a trip Moran took with another of the Great
Surveys. This one was led by former U.S. Army Major and college professor,
John Wesley Powell. Moran joined the expedition in the summer of 1873,
traveling first with Powell from Salt Lake City to an area that is now known as
Zion National Park. A month later he caught his first glimpse of the Grand
Canyon, a view that made a great impression on him. "The whole gorge for miles
lay beneath us and it was by far the most awfully grand and impressive scene
that I have ever yet seen," he wrote to his wife. "A suppressed sort of roar
comes up constantly from the chasm but with that exception everything impresses
you with an awful stillness."
"The Chasm of the Colorado" was just one of many artistic works that Moran
produced as a result of his travels with Powell. He made more than two dozen
wood engravings to accompany a three-part adventure article Powell wrote for
the magazine "Scribner's Monthly." More than thirty pieces of Moran's artwork
also illustrated Powell's 1875 cumulative expedition report. Just as Moran's
work had increased the popularity of Yellowstone, so it gradually promoted a
nationwide interest in the Grand Canyon. For Moran, the mighty Canyon was
until the end of his life a great source of inspiration. Thirty years after
first catching a glimpse of it, he would write, "Of all places on earth the
great canyon of Arizona is the most inspiring in its pictorial possibilities."
The artist would return to the region almost every year for the last 25 years
of his life and produced hundreds of different representations of its
landscapes.
Moran completed the last of his three great oil paintings, "Mountain of the
Holy Cross" in 1875. By choosing to accompany Powell in the summer of 1873,
Moran missed out on being one of the men on Hayden's team to first "discover"
the Peak in the summer of 1873. Moran visited the mountain the following
summer. Hidden deep in the Colorado Rockies, it was extremely difficult to
reach, which in part explains why Moran made very few sketches of the area. He
also discovered that there was only one good vantage point from which to view
the snow-engorged, cross-like crevasse at the mountain's peak. The resulting
oil painting of the massive peak was displayed the year after its completion at
the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The suffering it conveyed inspired
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to write a poem mourning the loss of his wife titled
"A Cross of Snow." It reads in part:
There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the
changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day
she died.
By the end of his long life, Moran had produced more than 1,500 oil paintings,
800 watercolors and scores of other drawings and prints. Although he did paint
subjects in Europe and Mexico, most of his work depicts scenes of the American
West. It was through this art that Moran played a significant role in helping
the Government promote and exploit the West. Even more than that, Moran
succeeded, in the words of one of his biographers, in influencing "an entire
generation's understanding of its country" and in "making the West an indelible
part of the American consciousness."
|
