The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
Thomas Moran (1837-1926) · 1893 to 1901
Not currently on display. Second-floor galleries for eighteenth to early twentieth century art closed on 22 September 2025 for reinstallation and are scheduled to reopen on 6 November 2026; the museum's collection page listed this work as not on view during the closure. Confirm the gallery placement after reopening. The 1872 version owned by the Department of the Interior is also normally shown in this museum; confirm which versions are on view.
The canyon opens in front of you in yellows, pinks and rust reds, the colours that gave the Yellowstone River its name, with the Lower Falls plunging in a white ribbon at the far end and a haze of spray hanging above it. The canvas is more than four metres wide, so the view fills your field of vision the way the real place does from Artist Point. In the foreground a rocky ledge with a few figures and a scraggy pine gives you somewhere to stand, and the eye then drops into the gorge and travels the miles to the falls.
Moran first saw Yellowstone in 1871 as a guest artist on the Hayden Survey, the government expedition that mapped the region, and he sketched furiously alongside the photographer William Henry Jackson. Look at how he handles the coloured rock: the cliffs are built from thin washes of paint, and he lets the white ground shine through to give the sulphurous yellow its glow. The composition is not a literal view. Moran said that his aim was the impression of the place rather than a topographic record, and he moved features to make the picture work, while keeping the geology recognisable to anyone who has stood on that rim.
The original 1872 version of this subject was bought by Congress and helped persuade lawmakers to create Yellowstone as the first national park; it belongs to the Department of the Interior and hangs on long-term loan in this museum's collection galleries. The painting in front of you is Moran's later and larger reworking, begun in 1893 for the Chicago World's Fair and finished in 1901. It was given to the museum by George D. Pratt in 1928. Together the two canvases show how an artist's picture of a wilderness became part of the argument for preserving it.
Did You Know? Moran's earlier version of this view was bought by Congress in 1872, the same year Yellowstone became the world's first national park.
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