
In 1876, the publisher Louis Prang issued a portfolio of fifteen
chromolithographic reproductions of watercolors by Thomas Moran titled
The Yellowstone National Park. With exquisitely-printed images by an
artist renowned for his monumental paintings of the West, and a text by
the famous geologist Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden — who called the
portfolio a “just subject for national pride” — Moran and Prang
capitalized on the recent establishment of Yellowstone as the first
national park and the public’s growing fascination with western
landscape.
Born in England in 1837, Moran immigrated to the
United States with his family when he was seven years old, and
apprenticed as an engraver and painter in his teens. An 1871 excursion
to the Yellowstone region with Hayden, leader of a U.S. Geological
Survey in the western territories, proved a turning point for the
artist. Captivated by the hot springs, geysers, and colorful geography
of the region, Moran catapulted to fame the following year when Congress
purchased his monumental painting,
The Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone,
1872, to hang in the Capitol in Washington, D.C. By the time of his
death in 1926, Moran was intimately linked with Yellowstone and had
created thousands of oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints of
the West.
Highly-detailed color prints that rival the oil
paintings and watercolors on which they are based, chromolithographs
were tremendously popular in the nineteenth century. Thought to be the
most democratic art form, they allowed anyone to acquire well-made
reproductions of famous artworks to hang in their home.
The vibrancy
and accuracy of Prang’s chromolithographs proved a faithful complement
to Moran’s original watercolors, and helped spread the artist’s
new-found fame even further.
