Author Description

This illustrated catalog of Thomas Moran's field sketches includes an interpretive essay tracing the artist's seventy-year career in the field; a chronological, stylistic, and geographical survey of his fieldwork; and an illustrated checklist of the 1,080 sketches in public collections. Moran is best known for his work in the American West during the post-Civil War expansion, particularly in what would become Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, and Yosemite national parks. Yet this virtuoso painter and draftsman also travelled in search of inspiration in Pennsylvania, New York's Long Island, Florida, Wisconsin, Mexico, England, Scotland, Wales, France, and Italy, returning repeatedly to favorite subjects. An almost compulsive desire to sketch refined his innate skill as one of America's finest landscape artists.