Thomas Moran and the Surveying of the American West

Presenting the first in-depth study of Thomas Moran’s early western landscapes, Joni Louise Kinsey describes how the artist created three monumental paintings—The Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone (1872), The Chasm of the Colorado (1873-74), and The Mountain of the Holy Cross (1875)—that, in the aftermath of the Civil War, evoked the nation’s spiritual journey and suggestsed its cultural upheaval. The author describes how the paintings reflected a new national identity of both failure and promise, and helped open the West for tourism and travel.