Thomas Moran was born in Bolton, Lancashire, England in 1837, one of a family of seven children.  Bolton was a grimy textile center and his parents were both handloom weavers.  He came to the United States when he was seven years old.  Though he received no formal art training, he was an apprentice to a wood engraver in Philadelphia during his teens.  From his experience, he learned the skillful manipulation of texture and value that became so evident in his work.

Moran became a western artist after working as an illustrator for magazines including Harper's and Scribner's.  At the age of thirty-four he was invited to accompany Ferdinand V. Hayden's 1871 Geological Survey Expedition to the Yellowstone Territory.  Moran's paintings of Yellowstone's geysers, hot springs canyons and cliffs, combined with remarkable photographs taken by pioneer photographer William Henry Jackson, played a major role in convincing Congress to make the region a national park in 1872.

After the Yellowstone trip, Moran's career as an expedition artist and painter blossomed. He continued to travel with subsequent Hayden surveys and painted Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon as well as other wilderness regions for the next forty years.

In 1863, Moran married Mary Nimmo, a Scottish immigrant, and together they went to Europe where he studied the work of J.M.W.Turner and came under the influence of the old masters.  Later they settled in Newark, New Jersey and had three children.  Mary died in 1899 and their daughter Ruth became his companion, accompanying him on his travels to Europe and the West.

Later in his career Moran visited New Mexico and became interested in painting the Indians and their surroundings.  But his most lasting fame will probably rest on his vivid and dramatic scenes of Western America's many national parks and monuments.  He continued to paint well into an advanced age and died in Santa Barbara, California in 1926 at the age of eighty-nine.