Aaron Bastian
Director
Lot 5
Thomas Moran(1837-1926)Green River, Utah sight 5 3/4 x 8 1/2 in. framed 14 x 17 in.
1 November 2022, 10:00 PDT
Los AngelesSold for US$94,875 inc. premium
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Thomas Moran (1837-1926)
Green River, Utah
signed, titled and dated 'Green River. Utah / March 24th. T. Moran. 1879' (lower left)
watercolor on paper
sight 5 3/4 x 8 1/2 in.
framed 14 x 17 in.
signed, titled and dated 'Green River. Utah / March 24th. T. Moran. 1879' (lower left)
watercolor on paper
sight 5 3/4 x 8 1/2 in.
framed 14 x 17 in.
Footnotes
Provenance
T.R. Potter, Clayton, Missouri.
Private collection, St. Louis, Missouri.
Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York, New York.
Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1997.
Exhibited
New York, Kennedy Galleries, Inc., no date.
Clayton, Missouri, Healy Galleries, no date.
Brooklyn, Brooklyn Art Association Show, no date.
Literature
Carol Clark, Thomas Moran: Watercolors of the American West, The Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth, Texas, 1980, no. 283, p. 157.
Three years after the Union Pacific Railroad entered the Green River, Wyoming territory, Moran first sketched the Wyoming portion of the river in 1871 on route to join Dr. Ferdinand V. Hayden on an expedition to survey the Yellowstone area of the Wyoming Territory. Moran returned to the Green River subject many subsequent times, including in the present work that was executed during an 1879 trip to Utah. Prior to the arrival of the railroad, intrepid explorers would have had to follow the Oregon Trail to access this area. "[The Green River was] to be a favorite subject, featured in as many as forty of Moran's canvases [and many more works on paper]...it is obvious that Moran found the angled towers of the Green River continually inspiring and challenging" 1
Moran scholar Nancy Anderson says, "Unlike Yellowstone, the landscape of Green River had not been 'previewed' for eastern viewers through illustrations published in Scribner's. The multicolored, castellated buttes were an entirely fresh subject for paintings. Moran made the most of this opportunity, claiming the landscape as his own through a series of paintings completed over a period of forty years." 2
The otherworldly stratified geological formations of the area are the focus of the present work. The rock faces are painted in reflective and naturalistic watercolor washes that highlight the striations of the butte sandstone facades. From the water horizon, mirrored yellow stony tones yield to variegated rusty reds, in contrast with the rich, deep green foliage in the middle ground. Moran channels influential Romantic 19th Century European painters Joseph Mallord William Turner and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot in his light touch on the blue and hazy sky that serves to further highlight the geological majesty of the area.
While Green River City was an increasingly populous place, Moran chose to focus on a nostalgic presentation of the monumental and majestic natural landforms of the region in Green River, Utah. An important practitioner of early America's views of the West, Moran was able to readily convey the extraordinary grandeur of the rural West in works like Green River, Utah that had lasting and profound implications on Manifest Destiny and national expansion.
1 Joni Kinsey, Thomas Moran and the Surveying of the American West, Smithsonian Institute Press, 1992, p. 29.
2 Nancy Anderson, Thomas Moran, Washington, D.C., 1997, p. 49.