The Half Dome—View from Moran Point

Thomas Moran's etching The Half Dome—View from Moran Point depicts, beyond foreground boulders and evergreen trees, the monolithic granite peaks known as Half Dome (right) and North Dome (left) separated by the narrow Yosemite Valley in the scenic Sierra Nevada mountains of California, a magnificent view that remains almost unchanged today. A title cover sheet accompanying this impression identifies the print with an exuberant printed inscription celebrating "this glorious wilderness." Indeed, the lofty vantage point and the scene's vast depth, emphasized by the contrast between the dark foreground and light-filled distance, make the most of the site's actual grandeur.

In August 1872, a year after his first expedition to Yellowstone (in what is now the state of Wyoming), Thomas Moran traveled to California to fulfill a commission to create an illustration of Yosemite for the serial publication Picturesque California and the Region West of the Rocky Mountains, from Alaska to Mexico, edited and partly written by pioneering conservationist John Muir (1838–1914) and published between 1888 and 1890. Moran made sketches on site and later, on his return to his studio, he executed a finished watercolor of Half Dome as dramatically viewed from Moran's Point, near Glacier Point (Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, New York). In 1887, Moran translated the watercolor into this etching, the opening plate in Muir's book. Such images helped garner national support for preserving Yosemite and other magnificent natural sites as national parks.

Moran's landscapes, both paintings and prints, played a significant role in documenting America's wilderness, particularly the American West, in the late nineteenth century. Following his childhood emigration to the United States, Moran began his career in 1853 as an apprentice wood engraver in Philadelphia, then a major center for printing and publishing. From 1859 to 1869 he focused on lithography, but his most significant printmaking contribution was in etching, which he began to pursue in the late 1870s. Indeed, during the 1880s, Moran and his wife, Mary Nimmo Moran, were influential in encouraging other American artists to make etchings. In the course of his career, Moran made more than 80 etchings, both original compositions and reproductions of works previously created in other media, including this print.

Collection Cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, February 1999.

On Process: The American Print, Technique Examined, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, January 13–March 2, 2001.

Thomas Moran, N.A., Mary Nimmo Moran, S.P.E.: A Catalogue of Complete Etched Works of Thomas Moran, N.A., and N. Nimmo Moran, S.P.E. New York: Christian Klackner Galleries, 1889. No. 60, p. 15.

Bruhn, Thomas P. American Etching: The 1880s. (exh. cat., William Benton Museum of Art). Storrs, Connecticut: William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, 1985. No. 16, pp. 47–48.

Friese, Nancy with Anne Morand et al. The Prints of Thomas Moran in the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art. (exh. cat., Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art). Tulsa, Oklahoma: Thomas Gilcrease Museum Association, 1986. Fig. 20, pp. 18, 36.

Amory, Dita and Marilyn Symmes. Nature Observed, Nature Interpreted: Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Drawings & Watercolors from the National Academy of Design and Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution. (exh. cat., National Academy of Design). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1995, pp. 107–111.

The South Dome, Yosemite Valley, Thomas Moran. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, February 1999. Ill. (black & white). [specific reference to Terra print]

Brownlee, Peter John. Manifest Destiny / Manifest Responsibility: Environmentalism and the Art of the American Landscape. (exh. cat., Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago, Illinois). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for American Art and Loyola University Museum of Art, 2008. Text pp. 17, 37 (checklist); Ill. p. 10 (color).