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Fine Art Prints by Walton Mendelson
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Thomas Moran Interpretive
Reprints™ Portfolio Text |
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Thomas Moran was called the “father”
of the national park system. Although artist George Catlin conceived
the idea in 1832, “. . . by some great protecting policy of
government . . . in a magnificent park . . . . A nation’s
park, containing man and beast, in all the wild and freshness of
their nature’s beauty!” it was Thomas Moran, a generation
later, whose art brought the west to people in a way that made possible
the first national park in the world, Yellowstone, followed by dozens
of national parks and monuments. |
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Between 1867 and 1879 there were four government
supported expeditions west. Moran was invited to join the 1871 expedition
to Yellowstone, his first of many trips to the West. Moran’s
drawings from that and his other expeditions appeared in the popular
magazines and books of the times: Scribner’s, Harper’s,
Century, The Aldine, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Magazine,
Picturesque America, Picturesque Canada, etc. His first major
successful painting, The Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone,
measuring 7’ by 12’, was completed a few months after
President Grant signed the Yellowstone park bill into law, March
1, 1872. It was purchased by the government for $10,000. His water
colors and drawings are often cited as being instrumental in getting
support for the bill from politicians, none of whom had seen Yellowstone. |
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What is significant about Moran and his work
is that he found a style appropriate to the landscape and he brought
landscape to the American people—neither a small feat. Most
people lived in the east, and if they ventured from the major urban
centers, their wilderness landscape was the far tamer Appalachian
mountains. The geology and geography of the West was the thing of
myth: Yellowstone was “the place where hell bubbled up.”
Often tacked onto the list of Hudson River School painters of a
generation earlier, Moran’s style was greatly influenced by
the work of J. M. W. Turner, whose work he first saw as engravings
in books; but in 1862 he made a trip to England to see Turner’s
paintings. Moran found a way to express the grandeur of the western
landscape that was truly his, but which has influenced landscape
artists ever since, even after the popularity of his style waned
towards the end of his life. He had been trained as an engraver,
and, arguably, that understanding along with his style and quickness
made him much in demand. That demand translated into a large public
awareness both of his work and the places he loved to draw and paint.
What most people saw were the woodcuts of his drawings. |
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Woodcuts and steel engravings use a similar
and rich variety of patterns to translate color and texture. Other
than through the use of multiple inkings and plates, these images
are, however, except at their best, lifeless. These are collaborative
images. In some instances we know that the person who did the drawings
actively worked with one or more engravers—more often they
did not. Even without his famous [see Moran's dark red logo on the
portfolio title page], Thomas “Yellowstone”
Moran, his work stands out; and in The Aldine and the Picturesque
series of books, where the emphasis was on the highest quality engravings,
images not of the West are quickly recognizable as his. |
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Despite the quantity of books and magazines
published in the second half of the nineteenth century, they are
disappearing and with them the art work. Neglect, ignorance, wear
and tear, oxidation, foxing, insects, water damage, and commerce
are destroying tens of thousands of books a year. There are large
companies that plate books and throw out the remainder. Bookstores
throw out books that are too damaged to sell. Children throw out
their grandparents’ old books. Paintings remain, but the bulk
of the images that help change a world are disappearing. |
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Interpretive Reprints™ uses color scanning,
digital editing software, and Epson’s UltraGiclée™
system (specific papers, inks, and printers) to give back a dynamic
that was lost when these images were recast from drawings and paintings
to woodcuts or steel engravings. Ansel Adams talked about the negative
being the score and the print being the performance. It is accepted
that a performance of a play or a symphony has something original
in it, but this is seldom seen in the visual arts, not as an end
in itself. All reproductions, even facsimile reproductions, vary
from the original: scale, color, densities, surface sheen, etc.
And one artist rarely reproduces the work of another. Rather than
trying to minimize those deviations, One-Off Press embraces the
possibilities with its Interpretive Reprints™ portfolio series.
Following a careful assessment of the artist’s paintings and
drawings, a new interpretive print is created. The UltraGiclée™
print, selected by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as offering
the best combination of fidelity and longevity for reproducing art
in its collections, provides the best way to reintroduce these images.
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Let me design your book or print your art. Prescott
is an email away—contact! |
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