Thomas Moran

(1837-1926)

Venetian Scene 10 x 14 in. (25.4 x 35.6 cm.)

Footnotes

Provenance
Sale, Christie's, New York, November 30, 1995, lot 33.
Acquired at the above sale by the late owner.

This painting will be included in Stephen L. Good, Phyllis Braff, and Melissa Webster Speidel's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Thomas Moran's work.

Sublime and romantic, Thomas Moran's painting Venetian Scene and it's view of the architectural highlights and iconic lagoon of Venice, was painted in 1896, a decade after the artist visited the Italian city for the first time. Moran was introduced to Venice initially through the work of Romantic painters and writers, including J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), John Ruskin (1819-1900), and Lord Byron (1788-1824). When he finally witnessed the city's splendor first-hand in May 1886, it was a thrilling and profound experience. Moran wrote to his wife Mary, "Venice is all, and more, than travelers have reported of it. It is wonderful. I shall make no attempt at description..." (as quoted in, N.K. Anderson et al., Thomas Moran, New Haven, Connecticut, 1997, p. 122)

Moran returned to Venice on a second sketching trip in 1890, and he used the extensive plein air drawing and watercolor studies he produced on both visits as the basis for larger and more finished oil paintings he would create for many years in his studio, such as the present painting.

Like his Hudson River School contemporaries including Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) and Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), Moran travelled extensively through the United States and Europe seeking first-hand inspiration. He spent much of his career focused on the American frontier, and is celebrated for his detailed depictions of Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon and Wyoming's Green River as well as his work as artist-activist in helping convince Congress to make Yellowstone a National Park in 1872. Views of Venice are also an important and frequent subject for the artist. In fact, after his initial 1886 trip to the city, Moran submitted a Venetian subject nearly every year he exhibited at the National Academy. (Ibid, p. 123)

Moran's American audience responded enthusiastically to his Venice subjects, drawn to the atmospheric and gauzy views of the scenic 'Floating City' that were so reminiscent of Turner's work. In his Venetian paintings, Moran excels at capturing, at once, the physical and picturesque details of the city while also expressing a sense of his own poetic and dream-like feelings about it.

Dominated by the double domes of basilica Santa Maria della Salute to the left and balanced with the Campanile and Doge's Palace at the right, the viewer enters the scene along the Giudecca before a lively vignette of sail boats crowded near a pier. The boats, foreground quay and buildings are painted with clarity in a bold and crisp color palette highlighted with punches of red and yellow, while the distant architecture is draped in gossamer layers of ivory, coral and violet shadow. Swirling white clouds dominate the sky and are reflected in the still lagoon waters. The present painting's contrasting handling of close and distant light, and the color effects through mist and air, reveal the artist's sophisticated mastery of and ability to deftly articulate atmosphere. In Moran's jewel-toned Venetian Scene, the artist presents a sensory view of the architectural splendor of the city while also exploring light, color and imagery influenced by the Romantics.