![]() But former senator Allen Simpson of Wyoming asked if it would be possible to borrow the giant picture of the Grand Canyon that Moran painted after a second journey to Yellowstone in 1892. ![]() To move the painting from the Smithsonian to a museum out west was nothing short of an elaborate feat. During this two-month trip, Moran produced numerous watercolor sketches, which would not only become the first images of Yellowstone to be seen by Easterners, but they would also be used by Hayden (and others) to persuade Congress to designate Yellowstone as a national park. Having been asked to provide illustrations for a magazine piece on Yellowstone, Moran joined geologist Ferdinand Hayden, leader of the first government-sponsored survey of the region, on his expedition. In the summer of 1871, Moran made his first journey to Yellowstone, known as “the place where hell bubbled up.” Easterners had at best only a vague idea of how this alien landscape actually looked. His love of literature and fascination with nature imbued his landscapes with fantasy-like qualities. Although he initially trained to be an engraver, Moran decided to study painting and drew inspiration from Pennsylvania’s forests. ![]() Thomas Moran was born in England in 1837 but his father soon uprooted his family to the United States, settling in Pennsylvania. Thomas Moran's 1893-1901 canvas, "The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone," is impressive not only in terms of its masterful execution and sheer size-14 feet by 8 feet-but in terms of how it codified images of the United States’ natural wonders of the West in the minds of Americans. Recently, the Smithsonian American Art Museum welcomed home a seminal work of landscape painting after a four-month vacation at the Whitney Gallery of Western Art, located at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming.
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