Thomas Moran’s The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1893 – 1901) will be on loan from the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of the Whitney Gallery of Western Art’s 50th Anniversary celebration. The massive painting—more than eight feet high and fourteen feet long—arrives in early summer for a four-month stay and will be unveiled June 21.
“This is truly a glorious, iconic painting of Yellowstone that first appeared in Chicago at the 1893 Columbian Exposition,” says Alan Simpson, former U.S. Senator from Wyoming and the historical center’s chairman of the board of trustees. “What a rare and extraordinary privilege for our visitors to connect with Thomas ‘Yellowstone’ Moran’s Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and then to see the landscape that inspired it as they travel in Yellowstone.”
Indeed, Moran (1837 – 1926) is often considered the pivotal figure in efforts to make Yellowstone a national park. In 1871, he accompanied F.V. Hayden’s geological survey of the area as guest artist and worked closely with photographer William H. Jackson. Ostensibly, Moran painted the extraordinary sights of Yellowstone, and Jackson’s images proved they existed—in case there was any question about Moran’s interpretation.
“Yellowstone retains its hold upon my imagination with a vividness of yesterday,” Moran would say about this unique landscape to which he often returned. “The impression then made upon me by the stupendous and remarkable manifestations of nature’s forces will remain with me as long as memory lasts.”
Moran returned to Yellowstone in 1892 and was determined to once again paint the Grand Canyon. Unlike his first Grand Canyon of Yellowstone completed in 1872, Moran painted no humans in his later depiction. A tiny bird flying low over the canyon floor—right of center—is the only evidence of life beyond the canyon’s rocks and trees. Experts call the later version more “painterly” since by 1892, both Yellowstone and Moran were equally well known.
On the Web: www.bbhc.org.
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