01 Marine Painting, Antonio Nicolo Gasparo Jacobsen’s La Champagne, With Footnotes, #322
Entrance to the Grand Canal, Venice, 1906
Oil on canvas
14 x 20.25 inches [35.56 x 51.435 cm]
Private collection
Sold for $100,000 USD in Nov 2022
Though Moran spent a great deal of time painting the American frontier, it is his dreamy, jewel-toned depictions of Venice that perhaps best epitomize his intent to imaginatively capture the romantic, picturesque beauty and the unique sensory experience of a locale, rather than depicting reality in topographically accurate detail. More on this painting
Thomas Moran (February 12, 1837 — August 25, 1926) from Bolton, England was an American painter and printmaker of the Hudson River School in New York whose work often featured the Rocky Mountains. Moran and his family, wife Mary Nimmo Moran and daughter Ruth, took residence in New York where he obtained work as an artist. He was a younger brother of the noted marine artist Edward Moran, with whom he shared a studio. 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.
Moran along with Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, and William Keith are sometimes referred to as belonging to the Rocky Mountain School of landscape painters because of all of the Western landscapes made by this group. More on Thomas Moran