A Panorama of Pittsburgh
at the Frick through 10/5
Learn about Pittsburgh's past by viewing more than 130 printed views of the city.
Meissonier masterpiece
now on view at the Frick
1806, Jena is on view at the Frick through May 31, 2009.
This Sunday is
RADical Day at the Frick
Visit the Frick on 10/5 for a full day of activities and fun!
Rob Rogers discusses
political cartooning on 10/12
The Post-Gazette's award-winning editorial cartoonist will discuss his experiences covering the 2008 presidential campaign and conventions.
Music for Exhibitions
begins new season 11/18
Join Katherine Soroka and Chatham Baroque for an evening of memorable music.
View photos from the 2008 H. C. Frick Horseless Carriage Tour
Twenty-six teams of drivers made it a day of fun.
Sign up for the
Frick e-newsletter
Each month, receive the latest information about exhibitions; programs for adults, families, children, and teachers; events; specials at The Café and the Museum Shop; and more.
at the Frick through 10/5
Learn about Pittsburgh's past by viewing more than 130 printed views of the city.
Meissonier masterpiece
now on view at the Frick
1806, Jena is on view at the Frick through May 31, 2009.
This Sunday is
RADical Day at the Frick
Visit the Frick on 10/5 for a full day of activities and fun!
Rob Rogers discusses
political cartooning on 10/12
The Post-Gazette's award-winning editorial cartoonist will discuss his experiences covering the 2008 presidential campaign and conventions.
Music for Exhibitions
begins new season 11/18
Join Katherine Soroka and Chatham Baroque for an evening of memorable music.
View photos from the 2008 H. C. Frick Horseless Carriage Tour
Twenty-six teams of drivers made it a day of fun.
Sign up for the
Frick e-newsletter
Each month, receive the latest information about exhibitions; programs for adults, families, children, and teachers; events; specials at The Café and the Museum Shop; and more.
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February 9, 2001 - May 8, 2001 |
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The Poetry of Place: Works on Paper by Thomas Moran from the Gilcrease Museum, an exhibition of more than eighty works on paper by one of nineteenth-century America's most prominent landscape painters, is on view at The Frick Art Museum, Pittsburgh, from February 9 through May 8, 2001. The watercolors, which are complemented by several drawings and watercolors of western Pennsylvania, chromolithographs of Moran's travels in the Yellowstone region and Grand Canyon, letters, and folios containing his etchings and chromolithographs, create an intimate portrait of the artist, revealing his romantic vision of the Western wilderness, as well as his role in its exploration and subsequent popularity. Thomas Moran (1837-1926) exemplifies better than any other artist the nineteenth-century artist-explorer: landscape painters who accompanied government expeditions to the West and played a key role in the exploration and "conquering" of the American continent. The exhibition includes some of the seminal sketches he made that led to the creation of America's first national park-Yellowstone. The Poetry of Place is organized by the American Federation of Arts (AFA) and the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, and is curated by Donna Gustafson and Ann Morand. With the exception of four chromolithographs on loan from Mellon Financial Corporation, as well as drawings, prints, folios, letters and notes specially added for the Frick showing of the exhibition, all works are drawn from the Gilcrease Museum, which has been the world's largest repository of works by Moran since it purchased the contents of the artist's studio in the late 1940s. Unlike many of his contemporaries, who undertook formal study in Europe, Thomas Moran, who was born in Lancashire, England, and raised in Philadelphia, was a self-taught painter. Nevertheless, two European landscape painters, Claude Lorraine and J.M.W. Turner, exerted a strong influence on the young artist, and in 1861 he spent a year in England studying Turner, with whose romantic vision of nature he identified. The Poetry of Place, which is organized chronologically, spans the years 1856 to 1900 and charts the artist's journeys not only throughout the United States, but also to Europe and Mexico. The exhibition opens with sketches Moran made in western Pennsylvania in July and August 1864, also borrowed from the Gilcrease Museum, and on view only in the exhibition's showing at The Frick Art Museum. A number of them recall the unspoiled views around the Juniata River and its tributaries, particularly Spruce Creek, a stream well-known today as one of the finest trout fisheries in the United States. Others depict Pittsburgh and Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania. A turning point in Moran's career came in 1871, when he was invited to join the expedition to Yellowstone led by Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, director of the U.S. Geological Survey. The area, which at the time was virtually unknown to the nation's European population, offered dramatic landscapes that appealed to Moran's poetic vision of the wilderness. The field sketches he made there, such as First Sketch Made in the West at Green River, Wyoming, vividly depicted the color and atmosphere of the place, qualities that were lacking from the photographs created by the expedition photographer, William Henry Jackson; they were the first color images of the area to be seen in the East, and were instrumental in persuading members of Congress to draft legislation that established Yellowstone as America's first national park. The prints on loan from Mellon Financial Corporation, also on view only in the exhibition's showing at The Frick Art Museum, are part of a portfolio of fifteen chromolithographs published by Louis Prang (Boston) after original watercolors by Moran based on his 1871 expedition to Yellowstone. By writing color notations inside the pencil outlines of landscape features, Moran composed paintings that could easily be recreated through chromolithography, a printing technique involving the use of separate lithographic stones for each color. The portfolio, which was published in 1876, was cited as "the best of American chromolithography" (McClinton, Katherine Morrison. The Chromolithographs of Louis Prang, New York, 1973). The four Mellon Financial Corporation plates, The Mosquito Trail, Sulpher Mountain and Lower Falls, The Great Blue Springs of the Yellow Geyser, and The Great Geyser, are among the most colorful and important prints from the portfolio. The success of the Yellowstone watercolors elevated Moran's reputation and gave a boost to his career, leading to such commissions as the "Blackmore Watercolors," a series of sixteen works created for wealthy English industrialist William Blackmore. Examples of these dramatic works, including The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1872) and The Upper Falls of the Yellowstone (1872), are included in The Poetry of Place. In 1873, he made his first visit to the Grand Canyon. A popular destination for tourists at the time, the Canyon held as much commercial as aesthetic appeal for Moran, and after 1892 he would return nearly every year. In images such as the watercolor The Grand Canyon of the Colorado (1892), Moran attempted to capture the awe-inspiring scale of the Canyon, creating great visual space in the intimate format of the sketch. Between Western trips, Moran worked in other locations, including Europe and East Hampton, Long Island. The exhibition includes many sketches from these places. As demand for images of the American West waned following the decade of the great national surveys, Moran traveled to Mexico and Cuba, in 1883, and to Italy, in 1885. These locales offered especially inspiring subject matter, and the artist produced a large volume of field sketches on those trips. Venice proved to be a particularly enduring subject throughout the remainder of the artist's career. In the panoramic sketches, Murano and Venice from Malamocco, the exotic city seems to be floating in the distance. In her introduction to the exhibition catalogue, Anne Morand, curator of art at the Gilcrease Museum, states, "The sketches offer an opportunity for a deeper understanding of Moran-the tremendous range of his travel as he sought new subjects, the aspects of the natural world that engaged him, and the remarkable extent of his technical development." Moreover, in addition to offering this engaging view of Moran's own work, The Poetry of Place also illuminates the nineteenth-century figure of the artist as explorer, whose view of nature as a sublime, primeval force played such a key role in the culture of the European settlers. After its showing at The Frick Art Museum, the exhibition travels to the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska. The Poetry of Place is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with an essay by Donna Gustafson, chief curator of exhibitions at the AFA. Ms. Gustafson discusses Moran's embrace of new opportunities made available by the Industrial Revolution, including the patronage of the railroad and expedition organizers, the romantic nostalgia for unspoiled terrain, and the burgeoning interest in both travel and armchair tourism. An introduction by Ms. Morand focuses on the Gilcrease Museum's extensive Moran collection, and the importance of the artist's field sketches to his oeuvre as a whole. Published by the AFA in softcover, the catalogue has sixty-four pages, with approximately eighty colorplates and five black-and-white comparative illustrations. It is available in the Museum Shop for $18.00. This exhibition is organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa. The Pittsburgh presentation is supported by a generous grant from the Allegheny Foundation, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The American Federation of Arts is the nation's oldest and most comprehensive nonprofit art museum service organization. Founded by an act of Congress in 1909, the AFA provides its more than 550 member institutions with traveling exhibitions and educational, professional, and technical support programs developed in collaboration with the museum community. Through these programs, the AFA seeks to strengthen the ability of museums to enrich the public's experience and understanding of art. Located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Gilcrease Museum collection includes more than 10,000 paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures by 400 American and native American artists from colonial times to the present. It is the repository of more than sixty paintings, some 1,500 sketches, and more than 1,000 letters, notebooks, and other artifacts of Thomas Moran. The collection was purchased from the estate of the artist's daughter, Ruth, upon her death in the late 1940s. |
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