Castle Rock, Green River, Wyoming
Framed: 24 3/8 x 28 3/8 x 2 3/8 inches (61.91 x 72.07 x 6.03 cm)
- L13
Thomas Moran's Castle Rock, Green River, Wyoming depicts a region that played a vital role in westward expansion. The area, which Moran painted repeatedly for more than 40 years, served as a rendezvous for trappers and traders in the early 19th century and witnessed the arrival of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1868. Responding to a longstanding national nostalgia for the untrammeled frontier, Moran effaced signs of settlement and civilization. He also enveloped the tower-like landmark and surrounding landscape in a poetic, atmospheric haze, suggesting both a physical and temporal distance from the viewer.
Moran's western landscapes were so popular among forgers that he "signed" them with a thumbprint- visible at the lower right-to deter unscrupulous reproduction of his paintings.
Moran's record book, 1901-21, Thomas Moran Papers, Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Okla. (as The Castle, Green River, Wyo.);
"Exhibitions Now On: Thumb Prints of the West," American Art News 10 (11 December 1915), 6;
"The World of Art," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 22 December 1915, 3;
3rd Exhibition by the Society of Men Who Paint the Far West, exh. cat. (New York: Macbeth Gallery, 1915), unpaginated;
possibly Memorial Exhibition: Paintings and Etchings by Thomas Moran, exh. cat. (East Hampton, N.Y., 1928), unpaginated;
Ross E. Taggart, "American Paintings in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri," Antiques 122 (November 1982), 1039 (as Green River, Wyoming);
NAMA 1991, 106-7 (as Green River, Wyoming);
William C. Ketchum Jr., The Art of the Golden West (New York: Smithmark, 1996), 80-81 (as Green River, Wyoming);
Nancy K. Anderson et al., Thomas Moran, exh. cat. (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1997), 274;
Masayuki Tanaka, American Heroism, exh. cat. (Tokyo: National Museum of Western Art, 2001), 47-48, 105, 110 (as Green River, Wyoming).
