THOMAS MORAN (1837-1926)
Tucupit Point (2,346 m - 7,698 ft)
United States of America (Utah)
In Colburn's Butte, South Utah, watercolor, 1873, 35,2 x 24cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
About the painting
The journey that resulted in the first painting of the Grand Canyon also yielded this watercolor by the same artist, Thomas Moran. In late July 1873, Moran was en route from Salt Lake City to the north rim of the Grand Canyon to join the expedition of John Wesley Powell. Near Kanarraville, Utah, he recorded in his sketchbook two Navajo sandstone pinnacles that offered a preview of the magnificent Zion Canyon to the south, which he visited days later. With Moran was Justin Colburn, a correspondent for the New York Times, to whom he eventually gave the watercolor he made from the sketch and whose name he gave to its principal feature.
Colburn's Butte, today called Tucupit Point, is in the Kolob Canyon section of Zion National Park. In Moran's watercolor, it is distinguished by the white cloud swirling down to silhouette its peak. The spontaneous-looking passage sets off a zigzag pattern of hill and grass that continues to the bottom of the sheet. Such celestial-terrestrial dynamics were a hallmark of the work of the English-born Moran, an admirer of the turbulent landscapes of J. M. W. Turner. From the watercolor Moran designed an engraving that was published in the art magazine The Aldine in 1874.
From the MET museum notice
The mountain
Tucupit Point (2,346 m - 7,698 ft ) is a prominent sandstone pinnacle in the Kolob Canyons of Zion National Park. The formation lays off of Taylor Creek Trail. The pinnacle - visible from U.S. Route 40 to the west - has been the subject of numerous photographs. ans paintings. The pinnacle was then named "Colburn's Butte" after Justin Colburn, a correspondent for the New York Times travelling with Thomas Moran; it would later be renamed Tucupit Point, "Tucupit" being the Paiute word for wildcat.
The painter
Thomas Moran was an American painter and printmaker of the Hudson River School in New York whose work often featured the Rocky Mountains. Moran and his family took residence in New York where he obtained work as an artist. He was a younger brother of the noted marine artist Edward Moran, with whom he shared a studio. A talented illustrator and exquisite colorist, Thomas Moran was hired as an illustrator at Scribner's Monthly. During the late 1860s, he was appointed the chief illustrator for the magazine, a position that helped him launch his career as one of the premier painters of the American landscape, in particular, the American West.
Moran along with Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, and William Keith are sometimes referred to as belonging to the Rocky Mountain School of landscape painters because of all of the Western landscapes made by this group.
Thomas Moran has a painting exhibited as part of the White House collection with The Three Tetons painted in 1895.
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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
