In May of this year, the monumental Thomas Moran landscape, “Green River of Wyoming” sold at Christie’s for $17.73 million. Not only did this wildly surpass the pre-auction estimate of $3.5 to $5 million, it was double the price of a John Singer Sargent that previously held the record for a 19th century American painting.
Moran’s panoramic works of the American West—most notably “Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone” which once hung in the United States Capital and now is housed in the Smithsonian—helped trigger the preservation movement that created our national parks. Moran, in addition to being so prominent in the art history and natural history of this nation, is a colorful and memorable part of our local legacy.
In 1884 Thomas Moran and his wife Mary Nimmo Moran became the first artists to build a house with a working studio in the Hamptons. Up until that time artists stayed mostly in boarding houses along Main Street and worked outdoors or in found spaces. Their pioneering efforts—in architecture and lifestyle—galvanized into a romantic tradition that is still with us. With cultivated tastes, virtuoso talent and a bohemian outlook, the Morans built a house on Main Street opposite East Hampton’s. Town Pond that was mannered, playful and an original, unpredictable spin on the newly popular Queen Anne style.
The studio was an enchanting gathering place for fellow aesthetes as well as the sixteen painters, printmakers and illustrators who belonged to the talented Moran family. There were musical evenings, poetry readings, evenings of Scottish folksongs (Mary was born in Scotland) as well as tableaux vivant in period costumes. This was a group that knew how to create its own fun. And when they wanted to get out, their destination was a gondola on Hook Pond, brought from Venice by Moran.
Mary died of typhoid fever in the 1899 epidemic spread from Cuba by the Rough Riders who were billeted at Montauk during the Spanish-American War. Daughter Ruth Moran inherited the house after her father’s death in 1926, and in 1947 sold it to Elizabeth and Condi Lamb, for whom it functioned as both home and real estate office.
Guild Hall, the ultimate beneficiary of the house, is in the process of deeding the property to the Thomas Moran Trust, a separate group formed specifically to reclaim and rejuvenate the house and grounds and to develop programs for future use.
East Hampton Village Mayor Paul Rickenbach has been a driving force in the preservation effort, and Town government, understanding that an opportunity like this only happens once, has contributed $500,000 out of the Community Preservation Fund for an easement on the property that will assure it is sensitively restored, appropriately used, and remains in the public domain.
The dazzling auction price at Christie’s and the attendant publicity could not have come at a better time in the effort now under way to raise $7.5 million to save, restore and maintain what is now a National Historic Landmark, and to establish an endowment. It seems appropriate: Although Moran painted spectacular scenes of the West, he was drawn to the less dramatic, quieter landscape of Eastern Long Island, and settled here, giving us a house and a tradition that we now have an opportunity to secure for generations to come.
Information on the Thomas Moran House can be found at thomasmorantrust.org