Thomas Moran, (1837-1926)

Indians at Green River 7 7/8 x 12 7/8in framed 15 x 20 1/4in

Indians at Green River
signed 'TMoran.' (lower left), titled on the presentation plaque
oil on panel
7 7/8 x 12 7/8in
framed 15 x 20 1/4in

Provenance
Eugene A. Gurnee, New York, New York.
Private collection, by family descent.
Sale, Sotheby's, New York, American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, December 3, 1992, lot 49.
Rudolf G. Wunderlich, Chicago, Illinois, from the above.
Gallery of the Masters, St. Louis, Missouri.
The Collection of Sydney Melville Shoenberg, Jr., St. Louis, Missouri, 1998, acquired from the above.
Sale, Sotheby's, New York, American Paintings, May 22, 2002, lot 183.
Questroyal Fine Art, New York, New York.
Acquired by the present owner from the above.

Exhibited
Chicago, Mongerson-Wunderlich Galleries, Paintings of the American West, 1994-1995, no. 18, illustrated.
Salt Lake City, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Bierstadt to Warhol: American Indians in the West, February 15 – August 11, 2013.

This work will be included in Phyllis Braff's, Stephen L. Good's and Melissa Webster Speidel's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work.

Thomas Moran is regarded as the premier artist of the final decades of Western exploration in the 19th century. He made eight trips West between 1871 and 1892 and his oeuvre remains a valuable historical, as well as artistic, record of that period.

In the summer of 1871, Moran set out for the mighty expanse of Yellowstone. His train stopped in Green River, Wyoming, where he discovered a landscape unlike any he had ever seen. Rising above the dusty railroad town were towering cliffs, reduced by nature to their geologic essence. Captivated by the bands of color that centuries of wind and water had revealed, Moran completed a small field study he later inscribed "First Sketch Made in the West."

Green River, Wyoming, was a bustling railroad town when Moran arrived. Three years earlier, Union Pacific construction crews had arrived intent on bridging the river. Their tent camp quickly became a boomtown boasting a schoolhouse, hotel, and brewery. Yet none of these structures appear in Moran's Green River paintings. Even the railroad is missing. Instead, the dazzling colors of the sculpted cliffs and an equally colorful band of Indians are often the focus. In a bravura display of artistic license, Moran erased the reality of advancing civilization, conjuring instead an imagined scene of a pre-industrial West that neither he nor anyone else could have seen in 1871. Although he is credited as a great documentary painter, he did not intend his paintings to be literal records of what he saw. He was committed to mysticism, a personal spiritual vision that caused him to find inspiration in nature. He said: "All my tendencies are toward idealization. A place as a place has no value in itself for the artist".

Moran went on to join the geologist Ferdinand V. Hayden's survey expedition to Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon and complete the watercolors that would later play a key role in the Congressional decision to set the region aside as America's first national park. In the dramatic paintings resulting from these trips, both in oil and watercolor, Moran conveyed the grandeur, mystique and power of the West by means of a style in which he combined the luminous color effects of Turner with strong contrasts of light and shadow. Over the years, the subject Moran returned to repeatedly was the Western landscape he saw first—the magnificent cliffs along the Green River.

Indians at Green River exemplifies Moran's fondness for these sacred cliffs. An evening glow hits the cliffs and conjures a spiritual feeling in the viewer. Moran details the stone monuments, their shapes distinct to the Green River environs, as native riders quietly move along the opposite banks of the river. In this diminutive but substantial painting, the artist seems to pay homage to this unique and spiritual place. In the modern art market, demand for Moran's work has remained exceedingly strong. No more so than for his scenes of the cliffs along the Green River.