34. Thomas Moran (1837-1926) after
Charles-François Daubigny
Landscape on the Marne

(click on image to print)
Moran, Landscape on the Marne

Landscape on the Marne

Etching, 1886, 145 x 240 mm., Klackner 48, Gilcrease Inst. 55. Fine, sharp impression on chine-appliqué with good margins, signed in pencil; the chine is lightly discolored and there is a stronger line of discoloration around the old mat opening, outside the subject but inside the plate mark. Despite the fact that several of its seminal figures were actually born in Britain, the American Etching Revival was based largely on French antecedents rather than British ones. Nothing shows this more clearly than the reproductive prints made by the Morans after Daubigny, one of the founders of the French movement. The Barbizon style was big in the United States and it influenced not only American etching, but painting as well. Moran’s etching style here is very precise and formal, if highly skilled, quite as if he felt that he was translating the work of one of his masters and wanted to efface his own personality to the greatest degree possible. The print is rare and of considerable art-historical importance.