Goose Creek, Sheridan

Thomas Moran's pencil sketch captures a valley landscape in northwestern Wyoming, with distant mountains marked by hatching to indicate ridgelines and elevation. The composition uses atmospheric perspective—softer detail toward the horizon, sharper foreground vegetation—a technique Moran refined across fifty years of documenting the American West. His work as both artist and geologist helped establish the visual conventions for landscape representation in the late nineteenth century, influencing how subsequent generations understood western terrain through fine art and popular publication.