Grand Canyon of the Colorado River (Moran)

Moran had had a decades-long reputation as a leading landscape painter, especially of the American West, when he was commissioned by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway to create a painting of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River with the purpose of helping to promote tourism and interest in that region. Moran created a painting with the unusually large dimensions of 238.8 cm × 134.6 cm (94 in × 53 in), in 1892. He worked on it again in 1908.^[1] It was gifted to the Philadelphia Museum of Art by Graeme Lorimer in 1975.^[1][2]

The painting depicts a vast, desolate landscape of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, mostly in gray and dark brown, extending towards the horizon, where can be seen rocky peaks, canyons and rivers, from a high point of view, while some clouds darken parts of the setting.^[3][4]