← Moran, Thomas

Roiling, churning waves breaking against a patch of a sandy beach fill most of this wide, horizontal landscape painting. The water deepens from aquamarine blue to teal, slate, and midnight blue amid clouds of ivory-white crests and spray. A glassy, mirror-like sheen of water coats the sandy beach where it drops sharply from the lower left corner to the breaking waves. A few shells or other objects are suggested with touches of pumpkin orange and charcoal gray along the beach. Near the lower center, a battered wooden cage is pommeled by waves where the water meets the foot of the sloping beach. A strip of sky lightens from sable brown to our left to light tan to our right across the upper third of the composition. The artist signed and dated the work with red paint in the lower left corner, “T MORAN 1884,” with the T overlapping the M to make a monogram.

The Much Resounding Sea

Moran, Thomas · American

1884

Medium
oil on canvas
Classification
Painting
Period
1876 to 1900
Image size
29253 × 11664px

Description

Roiling, churning waves breaking against a patch of a sandy beach fill most of this wide, horizontal landscape painting. The water deepens from aquamarine blue to teal, slate, and midnight blue amid clouds of ivory-white crests and spray. A glassy, mirror-like sheen of water coats the sandy beach where it drops sharply from the lower left corner to the breaking waves. A few shells or other objects are suggested with touches of pumpkin orange and charcoal gray along the beach. Near the lower center, a battered wooden cage is pommeled by waves where the water meets the foot of the sloping beach. A strip of sky lightens from sable brown to our left to light tan to our right across the upper third of the composition. The artist signed and dated the work with red paint in the lower left corner, “T MORAN 1884,” with the T overlapping the M to make a monogram.

Rights & Source

Open access image from the National Gallery of Art, released under its open access program. Metadata via the NGA Open Data Program (CC0).

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