Thomas Moran
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Thomas Moran is known for his sweeping paintings of the American West. He was hired by Scribner’s Monthly, a popular magazine at the time, and was sent to Yellowstone in 1871 with a U.S. Geological Survey team to illustrate this little-known place. His gigantic paintings, along with photos taken by William Henry Jackson, convinced Congress to designate the area as the first national park in 1872. These also made him famous, and he would adopt T-Y-M, Thomas “Yellowstone” Moran, as his new signature.
While he was an artist in the Hudson Valley School tradition, he is considered to be part of the “Rocky Mountain School of painters, along with Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Hill.
