Thomas Moran

(1837-1926)

Venice (The Splendor of Venice) 20 1/8 x 30 1/4 in. (51.1 x 76.8 cm.)

Footnotes

Provenance
Private collection, 1899.
Andrew Crispo Gallery, New York. (as The Splendor of Venice)
The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Lugano, Switzerland, 1981.
Spanierman Gallery, LLC, New York, by 1988.
[With] Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York, transferred from the above, 1988. (as The Splendor of Venice)
Spanierman Gallery, LLC, New York, returned from the above, 1988.
Middendorf Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Private collection.
Sale, Doyle, New York, May 27, 2019, lot 25. (as Venice (The Splendor of Venice), 1899)
Acquired by the present owner at the above sale.

Exhibited
New York, Century Association, November 4, 1899.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Nineteenth Century American Landscape Painting: Selections from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, October 29, 1982-January 23, 1983, pp. 84-85, no. 35, illustrated, and elsewhere. (as The Splendor of Venice)
New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., Adventure & Inspiration: American Artists in Other Lands, April 16-June 3, 1988, p. 132-33, no. 91. (as The Splendor of Venice)
Fort Worth, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, extended loan for public exhibition, 2020-21.

Literature
B. Novak, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Nineteenth-century American painting, New York, 1986, pp. 48, 184-85, 328, no. 56, illustrated. (as The Splendor of Venice)

This painting will be included in Stephen L. Good, Phyllis Braff, and Melissa Webster Speidel's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Thomas Moran's paintings.

Sublime and romantic, Thomas Moran's Venice (The Splendor of Venice) and its view of the iconic architecture and lagoon of the city, was painted in 1899, just a little over a decade after the artist first visited the Italian city. Moran was introduced to Venice initially through the work of Romantic painters and writers, including J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), John Ruskin (1819-1900), and Lord Byron (1788-1824). When he first witnessed the city's splendor firsthand in May 1886, it was a thrilling and profound experience. Moran wrote to his wife Mary, "Venice is all, and more, than travelers have reported of it. It is wonderful. I shall make no attempt at description..." (as quoted in N.K. Anderson, T.P. Bruhn, J.L. Kinsey, A. Morand, Thomas Moran, New Haven, Connecticut, 1997, p. 122)

Moran returned to Venice on a second sketching trip in 1890, and he used the extensive plein air drawing and watercolor studies he produced on both of his visits as the basis for larger and more finished oil paintings he would create for many years in his studio, such as the present work. Like his Hudson River School contemporaries, including Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) and Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), Moran travelled extensively through the United States and Europe seeking inspiration. Views of Venice are the most important and frequent subject for the artist, aside from the American West. In fact, after his initial 1886 trip to the city, Moran submitted a Venetian subject nearly every year he exhibited at the National Academy. (Thomas Moran, 1997, p. 123) Moran's American audience responded enthusiastically to his Venice subjects, drawn to the atmospheric and gauzy views of the scenic 'Floating City' that were so reminiscent of Turner's work. In his Venetian paintings, Moran excels at capturing, at once, the physical and picturesque details of the city while also expressing a sense of his own poetic and dream-like feelings about it.

Dominated by the double domes of Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute to the left and balanced with the Campanile and Doge's Palace at the right, the viewer enters the scene along the Giudecca before a lively vignette of sail boats. The boats, foreground quay, and buildings are painted with clarity in a bold and crisp color palette highlighted with punches of red and yellow, while the distant architecture is draped in gossamer layers of ivory, coral, and violet shadow. Swirling white clouds dominate the sky and are reflected in the still lagoon waters. The present painting's contrasting handling of close and distant light, and the color effects through mist and air, reveal the artist's sophisticated mastery of and ability to deftly articulate atmosphere. In Moran's jewel-toned Venice, the artist presents a sensory view of the architectural splendor of the city while also exploring light, color, and imagery influenced by the Romantics.