Edward Moran

Edward Moran, the oldest of the artistic Moran brothers, was acknowledged as the impetus behind the family's entry into the art world. "He taught the rest of us Morans all we know about art," stated his famous younger brother Thomas. During a long and successful career, Edward Moran became a member of the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts and an Associate of the National Academy of Design.

After working at a variety of trades, he turned to painting in the early 1850s. The first twenty-seven years of his artistic career were spent in Philadelphia, where he studied painting with the marine painter James Hamilton and with the landscapist Paul Weber. In 1861, Moran-traveled to London for additional instruction at the Royal Academy, and in 1871 he relocated to the New York area, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Seascapes were Moran's forté. By the 1880s, the artist was considered such an expert on the subject that his "hints for practical study” of marine painting were published in the September and November, 1888, issues of the Art Amateur. After his death, an admirer wrote that "As a painter of the sea in its many moods and phases, Edward Moran . . . had no superior in America."