Review by Choice Review
Prepared to accompany the first retrospective exhibition of the works of Thomas Moran, this handsome volume is one of the finest introductions to the varied career of this distinguished and accomplished artist. During his long career, Moran demonstrated his talents in watercolors, oils, engravings, etchings, drawings, and illustrations. Although Moran's distinctive interpretations of the landscapes of the American West are well known, he has yet to receive sustained scholarly examination. The four biographical essays; the essays examining not only his contributions to American etching, engraving, and lithography but also his work as an illustrator; as the chronology of his life; the appendixes; and the bibliography make this meticulously edited volume a significant assessment of Moran's life and work. The numerous photographs and extensive color reproductions of his work complement and expand the text and trace his artistic evolution. Students of the art of the American West will appreciate in particular the detailed chronology of his life, which allows the reader to follow his western travels and the exhibitions of his western paintings. General; undergraduate; graduate; faculty. P. D. Thomas; Wichita State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Moran's watercolors of the Yellowstone country so impressed Congress that it established the second U.S. national park in less than two months in 1872. Moran's subsequent monumental landscape, The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, became one of the most famous paintings of the nineteenth century, and Moran enjoyed a prolific and successful career thereafter. Yet Anderson implies in this exceptional companion to the first retrospective exhibition of Moran's work that not enough about him is generally available. So she and her colleagues present a whopping amount of material--not just sterling reproductions on nonglossy stock that resists finger-smudging but a four-chapter resumeof Moran's life and career, notes to the colorplates that consist of nineteenth-century reactions to his work and the literary passages that inspired him, essays on his printmaking and publishing, a 96-page biochronology, and appendixes, including, complete, the portfolio of Yellowstone watercolors that wowed the public in 1876. Anderson hopes this catalog only begins a future, extensive Moran bibliography, but really, it is a library in itself. --Ray Olson
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
