2. Thomas Moran
(1837-1926)
The Rapids Above Niagara

(click on image to print)
Moran: The Rapids

The Rapids Above Niagara

Etching, 1886, 152 x 203 mm., Klackner 51, Gilcrease Institute 58. Fine impression, printed with plate tone in the sky, wiped clean elsewhere, on wove paper with smallish, slightly irregular margins, signed in pencil. Moran was born in Bolton, England and died in Santa Barbara, California. Famous for his paintings of the American West, he was also, perhaps (and excepting Whistler, whose work was almost entirely in Europe), America’s first great etcher. Although this is an etched interpretation of one of his own paintings, the etching style is as free and spontaneous as if the work were first conceived as a print. A very effective work.