Canvas & Clay: The Collection of Judith and Philip Sieg, Bellefonte, Pennsylvania

This lot will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work being prepared by Stephen L. Good, Phyllis Braff, and Melissa Webster Speidel. 

Provenance:

Isaac Arnold, Sr., Houston, Texas

Berry-Hill Galleries, New York (as Punting on the River Cam, England)

Acquired from the above by the present owners, 1979

Exhibited:

University Park, Pennsylvania, The Pennsylvania State University Museum of Art, Bellefonte Collects, August 13 - October 22, 1989, no. 19, p. 20

Lot note:

Though best known for his images of the American West, Thomas Moran visited many other far-flung locales for artistic inspiration, including Mexico, Europe, and other regions across the United States. During these trips, the artist would execute numerous realistic, on-site sketches. After returning to the studio, the artist combined these views with his broad knowledge and experience of the known world to create pleasingly imagined compositions that widely appealed to his audience. Punting on the Cam, England, 1885, a depiction of a placid English river with a group of people in a punting boat, may be such an idealized amalgamation.

In 1882, Moran, his wife and fellow artist, Mary Nimmo Moran, and their children, traveled to Thomas’s hometown of Bolton, England, where he had emigrated from in 1844. While in Bolton, the artist and his wife mounted a large exhibition at Bromley’s Art Gallery. The exhibition proved to be a great success with the public, as well as with art critics. John Ruskin himself purchased two paintings and six etchings (including three by Mrs. Moran) and ordered a set of Moran’s Yellowstone chromolithographs. Moran greatly admired Ruskin’s writing and was probably elated by the approval of the critic. In addition to their time in Bolton, Thomas and Mary traveled to Strathaven, Scotland (Mary’s birthplace), Glencoe Pass, and Fingal’s Cave, Staffa (Gilcrease), where they both made numerous sketches.

Once back home in New York, the drawings done in England became inspiration for Moran in finished works, sometimes years later. The present artwork of lush, deeply shadowed greenery resembles the bucolic banks around Cambridge along the River Cam, which remains a popular place to punt. The distant church in the background, however, bears a strong resemblance to Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-Upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare. It is unknown where the present title of the painting came from or if Moran visited either locale, but this does not reduce the painting’s virtuosity. The dynamic, light-filled composition, with its striking color effects and distinctive handling of light and air draws inspiration from Joseph Mallord Wiliam Turner, whose canvases Moran viewed on a trip to Europe in 1861. Like Turner, he did not intend his artworks to be literal records, but to be personal visions inspired by nature, once stating: "All my tendencies are toward idealization. A place as a place has no value in itself for the artist."

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