Yellowstone

Thomas Moran's watercolor captures the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone with dramatic geological formations framing a view toward distant peaks. Tall rock spires and forested slopes frame the composition, while the canyon's pale walls open to sky above. Moran was part of the 1871 U.S. Geological Survey expedition led by Ferdinand Hayden. His sketches and finished works from this journey helped persuade Congress to establish Yellowstone as the nation's first national park in 1872. The painting exemplifies nineteenth-century landscape art's role in shaping American environmental policy and visual understanding of the West's scale and majesty.