Shipwreck
Artist
Edward Moran
(English, 1829 - 1901)
Date1862
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsFramed: 45 x 69 x 4 1/2in. (114.3 x 175.3 x 11.4cm)
Overall: 30 x 40in. (76.2 x 101.6cm)
Overall: 30 x 40in. (76.2 x 101.6cm)
ClassificationsPAINTINGS
Credit LineMuseum Purchase
Terms
Object number81.13
On View
Not on viewCollections
CopyrightNo known copyright restrictions.
Label TextAt the time of his death in 1901 Edward Moran was eulogized as one of the most prominent marine painters of his generation. He began his career in Philadelphia in the mid-1850s, when the production of clipper ships in the United States was at its height, and Isambard K. Brunel (1806-59) launched his famous steamship, the Great Eastern, in England.
Sometime early in 1861, Edward traveled to England to study the paintings, watercolors, and sketches by the great English landscape and marine painter Joseph M.W. Turner (1775-1851) then displayed in London at the South Kensington Museum and the National Gallery. Later that year Edward followed Turner's footsteps on a sketching tour of the English Channel coast. After returning to Philadelphia he made an impressive account of himself by displaying at least seventeen works in the 1862 annual exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
One of the pictures he exhibited that year was titled Coast Scene near New Brunswick, owned at the time by the important Philadelphia collector Harrison Earle. Because the title of the Utica painting seems to have been given to the work before it was purchased by the Museum in 1981, it is possible that it is the painting originally owned by Earle. The tall pilings in the left background of the work suggest that the picture might depict a scene somewhere in the Bay of Fundy. Moran first traveled to the Atlantic coast of Canada in the late 1850s, and, although no pencil or oil sketches from this trip have been identified, the experience provided material for several paintings he executed over the next couple of years.
Paul D. Schweizer
