96

EDWARD MORAN

American, 1829-1901

"The Narrows, From Staten Island", 1872

oil on canvas
signed lower left "Edward Moran", titled, signed, and dated on the reverse
18 x 30 in. (45.7 x 76.2 cm.), Frame: 20 1/2 x 32 1/4 x 1 1/2 in. (52.1 x 81.9 x 3.8 cm.)

  • Provenance: Private Collection, New York
  • Notes: Edward Moran (1829-1901) was born in Bolton, Lancashire, England in 1829. At the age of fifteen, Moran immigrated with his family to the United States. He first studied landscape and marine painting in Philadelphia and later returned to England to study at the Royal Academy in London. In 1871 he moved to New York City, which would, except for a brief move to France in the late 1870s, thenceforth be his primary city of residence.
    Working in Philadelphia in the 1850s, Edward Moran studied with Paul Weber, a popular teacher of Düsseldorf-school landscape painting whose students included William Trost Richards and William S. Haseltine, but the marine painter James Hamilton had a greater influence on Moran's work. Throughout the 1860s Moran exhibited at venues in New York, Boston and Philadelphia. Before settling in New York, and for the nearly thirty years that he lived there, Moran painted the city's harbor. At the time, it was the busiest harbor in the United States, providing Moran with inspiration for many paintings, with the port seen at different times of day and in a variety of weather conditions.
    On an 1861 trip to England, Thomas and Edward Moran discovered the work of J. M. W. Turner, and the pioneering English painter's sublime, light-filled canvases became the largest influence on both brothers' work. The frequency of marine subjects in Turner's oeuvre may have also influenced Edward Moran's interest in harbor scenes, which became his primary focus after moving to New York in 1872.
    The present work is one of Moran's paintings of New York City's bustling harbor viewed from Staten Island. The Narrows, a tidal strait separating Staten Island and Brooklyn, forms the principal channel of the Hudson River entering into the Atlantic Ocean. It is one of the most important harbors of the region and in Moran's painting it is clear it was a very busy channel in the late 19th century. The view today is changed by the 1964 opening of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.
    In 1888 Moran published "Hints for Practical Study of Marine Painting" in the Art Amateur. His most ambitious endeavor was the creation of thirteen works entitled The Edward Moran Series of Historical Paintings Representing Important Epochs in the Maritime History of the United States, which he completed in 1898. At the time of his death in 1901, it was written that "Few artists have painted more charming landscapes or better cattle pieces, and none, perhaps, have surpassed him as a painter of marines. It is as a painter of seascapes, doubtless, that he will live in fame."1
    1 Hugh W. Coleman, "Passing of a Famous Artist, Edward Moran," (Brush and Pencil, vol. 8, no. 4, July 1901), p. 188.
  • Condition: in good overall condition; mylar-lined canvas; scattered craquelure with corresponding inpaint mostly in the sky apparent under UV

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