Vivid views of America by Thomas Moran.

• Author: Anderson, Nancy

In 1871, Thomas Moran accompanied the first government-sponsored expedition to Yellowstone. The drawings and watercolors he brought back from that trip helped convince Congress that this strange land of geysers and hot springs should be preserved.

The artist went on to create equally stunning images of the Grand Canyon of Arizona, the Colorado Rockies, the Grand Tetons, and the desert Southwest. Justly celebrated as one of the premier painters of the American West, Moran was an artist of wide-ranging interests whose major works include Pennsylvania forest scenes, industrial landscapes, views of Venice, seascapes, and studies of New York's Long Island.

Moran was born on Feb. 12, 1837, in Bolton, England, the son of a hand-loom weaver whose life had been changed irrevocably by the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Displaced by labor-saving machinery, the family emigrated to America and settled in Kensington, Pa. (near Philadelphia), in 1844. After a short period of apprenticeship with an engraving firm, Moran began working in the studio of his older brother, Edward, also an aspiring artist. During the 1860s, Thomas and Edward (often joined by their brother John, a professional photographer) undertook numerous sketching trips in the forests surrounding Philadelphia. The paintings executed in the studio from these sketches, including "The Autumnal Woods," reflect the influence of the American pre-Raphaelites, whose fascination with the natural world generated extraordinarily detailed landscape studies.

Of even greater importance to Moran was the work of England's foremost landscape painter, J.M.W. Turner. In Philadelphia, Moran knew Turner's work primarily through prints and engravings. Eager to see Turner's paintings -- and his colors -- Thomas and Edward Moran traveled to England in 1862. In London, they made copies after paintings by Turner and later followed his sketching route along the coast of England, noting the "liberties" he had taken with the landscape.

In 1866, Thomas Moran returned to Europe to further his study of paintings by European masters and to exhibit his major early work, "Children of the Mountain," in the Exposition Universelle in Paris in the spring of 1867. At times mistaken for a western landscape, the picture was, in fact, an artistic invention since Moran had not yet crossed the Mississippi River or seen the Rocky Mountains. Four years later, however, he used this painting as collateral to help finance the western trip that changed the course of his career.

In the summer of 1871, Moran traveled to Virginia City, Mont., where he joined the expedition to Yellowstone. Led by...