29 THOMAS MORAN (1837-1926) Head of Yellowstone River, 1874 watercolor and graphite on paper 9 x 13 1/4 inches signed and dated lower left: TMoran / 1874 (with initials conjoined) The Yellowstone River flows northward through Yellowstone National Park in northwestern Wyoming and eastward across southern Montana into North Dakota where it empties into the Missouri River. Inside Yellowstone National Park, it flows into and out of Yellowstone Lake. It is a view of the river as it leaves the lake that Thomas Moran captures in his watercolor, Head of Yellowstone River. Moran was the artist for Dr. F. V. Hayden’s Geological Survey that set out to find the source of the Yellowstone River in the summer of 1871. Earlier expeditions had tried to find the head of the river but had failed. Moran worked closely with the expedition’s photographer, William Henry Jackson, helping him set up his photographic equipment and suggesting shots. Moran made at least two pencil sketches of Yellowstone Lake, and his subsequent watercolors of the area were based upon his sketches as well as Jackson’s photographs. Moran’s paintings of Yellowstone captured the beauty and wonder of the region, and along with Jackson’s photographs, helped to convince Congress to establish Yellowstone as the country’s and the world’s first National Park in 1872. In 1874, Louis Prang, a noted Boston publisher, commissioned Moran to paint a group of watercolors depicting Yellowstone and other Western locals the artist had visited to be reproduced as chromolithographs for a deluxe, limited-edition portfolio. Moran created Head of Yellowstone River for this portfolio. F. V. Hayden’s description of the scene accompanied the Prang reproduction: The river passes through a great variety of scenery, but at no point can it boast of more enchanting beauty than at its very head, near the magnificent lake of which it forms the outlet. Starting from the northwest extremity of the lake, it wanders in an aimless sort of way to the northward, with sluggish current more like a lake than a great stream, its waters teeming with flocks of geese and ducks. Beautiful islands spot its broad surface, and beyond its pine-fringed Shore the hazy outlines of distant mountains stand out boldly against the horizon.1 To complete the commission, as was his practice, Moran used sketches, photographs and memory to create the finished watercolor. There are similarities between Moran’s watercolor and Jackson’s photograph of the same title.2 Both are taken from the vantage point of the left bank looking out at a wide, slow river. Trees and bushes line the shore and mountain ranges appear in the distance. Moran’s format is horizontal, however, where Jackson’s is vertical. Moran eliminates some of the foreground found in Jackson’s photograph and cuts off the sky just above the trees on the left. Moran was a master of color and equally adept with both oil and watercolor. In his composition, he includes the sun low in the horizon and suffuses the upper sky with salmons and pinks. William Henry Jackson noted in later years that while in Yellowstone, what excited Moran “. . . was the landscape effects that included the lake as seen from its outlet, with its dots of wooded islands and background of the Absarokas.”3 And this is precisely the scene that Moran captures in Head of Yellowstone River. The splendor of the river and its outlet evidently left an impression on the artist: he had painted the scene earlier, in 1872,4 and he created an etching of the same spot in 1878-79.5 His excitement for the area is felt in all his depictions. That it had been a goal of the 1871 Hayden expedition to locate this outlet and that goal had been achieved would have only added to Moran’s excitement. His watercolor was at once a faithful and beautiful depiction of the head of the Yellowstone River. Literature: American Art Association, Collection of L. Prang and Company of Boston, New York sale, February 16-18, 1892, lot 356. James Benjamin Wilson, The Significance of Thomas Moran as an American Landscape Painter, PhD dissertation, Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms, 1955, pg. 161, no. 36. Carol Clark, Thomas Moran: Watercolors of the American West, Fort Worth, Texas: Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, 1980, pg. 129, no. 43. Nancy Anderson, Thomas Moran, Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1997, pg. 340, chromolithograph illustrated. Sotheby’s New York sale, 3 December 1998, lot 180, not sold. Provenance: The Artist Louis Prang & Co., Boston, Massachusetts American Art Association sale, New York, 1892 J. N. Bartfield Galleries, New York Private Collection, California Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico Private Collection, Wyoming, 2006 Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico $800,000 – $1,300,000 v
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Sheet 7 of the unbound portfolio, The Yellowstone National Park, and the Mountain Regions of Portions of Idaho, Nevada, Colorado and Utah, Boston: L. Prang & Co., 1876. Several copies of this photograph exist. The one reproduced here is in Moran’s personal collection (William Henry Jackson, Scenes Taken on Exploring Trips, 1871-1892, bound album, Moran Collection, East Hampton Library, pg. 24). Fritiof Fryxell, ed. Thomas Moran: Explorer in Search of Beauty, East Hampton, New York: East Hampton Free Library, 1958, pg. 60. This essay by Jackson appeared in Appalachia, September, 1938. The 1872 watercolor, Yellowstone River, is in the collection of the Gilcrease Museum. The etching, The Head of the Yellowstone River, is no. 19 in Anne Morand and Nancy Friese, The Prints of Thomas Moran in the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of History and Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma: Gilcrease Museum Association, 1986, pg. 82.