2024 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction / Lot 163225 / 373 • View Catalog •
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VERSO
Label, Hirschl & Alder Galleries, New York, New York
Label, J. N. Bartfield Galleries, New York, New York
In 1871, Thomas Moran first visited what would become Yellowstone National Park as part of the United States Geological Survey. At the request of American financier Jay Cooke, Moran joined the expedition team funded by Cooke (the director of the Northern Pacific Railroad), and Scribner’s Monthly, a new illustrated magazine. Selected to be the recording artist, Moran kept a diary documenting the expedition’s progress and activities as well as producing sketches and watercolors of the area. His work, along with photographs taken during the expedition, captured the nation’s attention and were instrumental in convincing Congress to establish Yellowstone as the first national park in 1872.
Art historian Joni Louise Kinsey wrote, “Thomas Moran’s experiences with Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon were part of a much larger process at the end of the nineteenth century to explore and map the American West, make it accessible for development, and perhaps most importantly, bring what previously had been considered alien territory into the psychological consciousness of the people of the United States.”
PROVENANCE
The artist
Lieutenant F. C. Grugan, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Mrs. George B. Agnew, New York, New York, by descent
Mrs. David P. Agnew
Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, New York, 1981
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, New York
Private collection, Devon, Pennsylvania, ca. 1985
Sotheby’s, New York, New York, 1996
Sotheby’s, New York, New York, 2018
Private collection, Delaware
EXHIBITED
American Masterworks on Paper, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, New York, 1985-86
LITERATURE
American Masterworks on Paper, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1985, pp. 5, 16, illustrated
