Essay by Melbert E. Peterson, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, Director Emeritus of the John Deere Planetarium

First-time travelers headed north toward Grand Canyon find breath-taking views. Almost without warning they find themselves gazing down into the mile-deep and seemingly endless Canyon, one of Thomas Moran's favorite subjects. Here easily and unbelievably seen are the mountain panoramas like his colorful Sun over Rock Outcrop. Throughout the world very few locations allow one to easily look toward such colorful mountain peaks, clouds, and even an occasional rainbow.

Like many nineteenth-century American artists, Thomas Moran began landscape painting as a member of the Hudson River School, the first formal school of landscape painting in the United States. With the growth of Romanticism, America's unspoiled landscape was hailed as a virtual Garden of Eden in comparison to well-known European scenes. These views appealed to a growing middle class market and typically depicted the gentle summer and fall views along the Hudson River. Following the Civil War, however, such idealistic regard for the East, both North and South, was challenged, and many artists sought new vistas, free of war associations.

Manifest Destiny became a driving force and in 1871, Moran travelled westward as a member of a team, led by Major John Wesley Powell, charged with capturing images of the beautiful and exotic American West. In 1872, Congress, inspired by the photographs of William Henry Jackson and Moran's colorful paintings, established Yellowstone National Park, ultimately leading to the further environmentalist step in 1916 of establishing the National Park System. Until his death in 1926, Moran continued to explore scenic areas of the West, especially Grand Canyon. Undoubtedly the colorful paintings of Moran led to the inclusion of Grand Canyon to the list of our National Parks.

During the latter years of his life, Thomas Moran spent most of his time at the South Rim of Grand Canyon with his daughter Ruth. Much of his work at this time, of course, featured the colorful and ever changing Canyon. However this painting certainly is not of the Canyon. It seems most likely to be of Green River country, an area he explored in the late 1800s with the Powell party and his friend, Jackson. Though Moran's work in general was not photographic in detail, this painting has more of a mystical character than most of his paintings. In this manner, it seems to relate more to the luminous qualities of the Luminist movement of the second half of the nineteenth century, fueled perhaps by a more transcendental than pictorial aim. The beauty and regard for the wonders of the West are breathtakingly captured in this late, visionary landscape created two years before Moran's death.