Thomas Moran from Bolton, England was an American painter
and printmaker of the Hudson River School in New York whose work often featured the Rocky Mountains.A talented illustrator and exquisite colorist, Thomas Moran was hired as an illustrator at Scribner’s Monthly. During the late 1860s, he was appointed the chief illustrator for the magazine, a position that helped him launch his career as one of the premier painters of the American landscape, in particular, the American West.
Thomas Moran began his artistic career as a teenage apprentice to the Philadelphia wood-engraving firm Scattergood & Telfer. Moran found the engraving process “tedious” and spent his free time working on his own watercolors.Moran traveled to England in 1862 to see Turner’s work. From that point on, he emulated Turner’s use of color, his choice of landscapes, and was inspired by his explorations in watercolor, a medium for which Turner was particularly well-known. During the 1870s and 1880s, Moran’s designs for wood-engraved illustrations appeared in major magazines and gift oriented publications.
The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone 1
The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone 2
Grand Canyon of the Colorado River
‘Cascade Falls, Yosemite’
Shoshone Falls, Idaho, ca. 1875
Shoshone Falls on the Snake River (1900)
Thomas Moran, Cliffs of Green River