Smelting Works at Denver

작가	Thomas Moran (American, born England, 1837–1926)
제작 시기	1892
분류	Drawing
재료·기법	watercolor and gouache
문화권	America
소장 부서	Drawings
이용 조건	퍼블릭 도메인 (CC0) — 수업·인쇄에 자유롭게 사용 가능

작품 설명

For today's viewers of Thomas Moran’s watercolor, the sight of factory smoke pouring into pristine mountain air might prophesy environmental ruin. Yet within the context of America’s western expansion, the imagery of factories was more ambiguous. Some in Moran's time regarded the factories as a force of destruction, while others interpreted them as symbols of progress. Moran himself viewed Denver’s budding industry with enthusiasm, writing positively to his wife about the city’s growth since he first visited while part of a government survey in 1873. Two decades later, when Moran returned to Denver to paint advertisements for the Santa Fe Railroad, smelting—the extraction of metal from heated rock—had transformed the city into an industrial hub. Although the brooding tone of this watercolor is unlike the artist’s bright, misty-eyed paintings of Edenic splendor, his depiction of the west’s emerging industrial landscape reinforces the same myth of manifest destiny—the belief that settler conquest of Native American lands was inevitable and justified—by illustrating the land’s richness in natural resources. Like the English Romantic painter J. M. W. Turner, whose style he emulated, Moran was primarily interested in the pictorial possibilities of industry. In this impressionistic study, Moran manipulates gray wash and white gouache to capture the vaporous quality of smoke and clouds as the two substances, industrial and natural, dissipate into the yellow atmosphere.

수업에 이렇게 활용하세요

이 작품은 퍼블릭 도메인이라 수업 자료로 자유롭게 내려받아 인쇄하거나 화면에 띄워 쓸 수 있습니다. Thomas Moran의 표현 방식을 관찰하고 따라 그려 보거나, watercolor and gouache 기법에 대해 이야기 나누는 감상 수업에 활용할 수 있습니다.

이미지 출처: 클리블랜드 미술관(The Cleveland Museum of Art) 오픈액세스. 원본 소장 정보 · LUNA WHALE ART에서 더 많은 명화 검색하기