Thomas Moran : Artist of the Mountains

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more securely in the milieu of the Gilded Age. It also portrays more fully the controversies that surrounded the art of Morans time, as he became "the Dean of American Painters." The American West was the subject of Thomas Morans greatest artistic triumphs - Yosemite, the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, Zion Canyon, the Virgin River, Colorados Mountain of the Holy Cross, and the Grand Tetons - but his travels with Ferdinand V. Haydens geological surveys of the Upper Yellowstone were matched by trips to his native Britain and to Venice, Florida, the Spanish Southwest, and Old Mexico. These scenes inspired memorable landscapes and seascapes, as did the sojourns of the Moran family in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and East Hampton, Long Island, when they retreated from the demands of the New York art scene. In the 1880s Moran and his artist wife, Mary Nimmo Moran, also threw themselves into the etching craze of the period, creating some of the finest prints produced in the United States. Moran was an artist happy in his work. He wrote, "I have always held that the grandest, most beautiful, or wonderful in nature, would, in capable hands, make the grandest, most beautiful, or wonderful pictures." The New York Times said of the first edition of this unique account of his life, "Morans mastery comes through clearly and awesomely and often, pleasurably." Readers will find the new edition equally enjoyable.