Edward Moran was almost seventy-two years of age when he died in the City of New York on June 9, 1901, having been born at Bolton, Lancashire, England, on August 19, 1829. He was the oldest son of a large family of children, and when a mere child was put to work at the loom, the humble vocation of his father who, the same as his ancestors had been for several generations, was a hand-loom weaver. Already while so employed the child was frequently caught sketching with charcoal on the white fabric in his loom instead of continually plying the shuttle. Whence and how he derived this inborn talent is one of those unsolvable problems which seem to set at defiance all the accepted canons of heredity. At all events, his talent was recognized by a local village celebrity, a decorator, who guided the child, then only nine years of age, in a crude way to a development of these artistic instincts, in consequence of which it is related that he was soon able to "cut marvellous figures from paper and afterwards draw their outlines on walls and fences."

The hardship of their pursuit, offering little hope of a brighter future for their large family of growing children, induced the parents about the year 1844 to join the tide of emigration to that land of golden promise, the United States, in immortalizing whose history and in furthering whose artistic development through his glorious marine pictures, the little Edward was destined to play so important a part. The family settled in Maryland, and in the struggle for existence soon awakened from their golden dream of a new Eldorado and returned to their old vocation. Edward again found employment at the loom, until the spirit of adventure and the desire of following the artistic bent of his mind impelled him one day, without a dollar in his pocket, to walk all the way to Philadelphia, where the boy hoped to find better opportunities. There also, however, he was disappointed, and after employment in various capacities, first with a cabinetmaker, then in a bronzing shop, and then at house painting, he finally returned to the loom at the munificent salary of six dollars per week. While so employed he attracted the attention of the proprietor, who one day surprised him while engaged in a superb drawing, stealing time for this purpose from his work. The intelligence of this man in recognizing young Moran's exceptional talent, and, as a result, advising him to quit mechanical labor, and introducing him to one of the then famous landscape painters of Philadelphia, Mr. Paul Webber, was the turning point in his career. Subsequently another artist, James Hamilton, guided him in his particular bent of marine painting, and after the usual hardships and struggle for recognition, the fate of all young artists, he finally was enabled to open a little studio in a garret over a cigar store with an entrance up a back alley. The works which emanated from there attracted such wide attention that he gradually rose to fame and fortune. His pictures were accepted by all the American academies, as well as the London Royal Academy and the Paris Salon, and he received many medals and awards. He was a member of the Water-Color Societies of this country and of London, of the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, an Associate of the National Academy of Design, also Vice-President of the Lotos Club and connected with many other artistic and social organizations and societies.

Why his artistic tastes should have been particularly directed to marine painting can be demonstrated just as little as the possession of his extraordinary talents at all; and yet for the former a possible solution may be found in the fact that his childish imagination and predilections may have been moulded through his sea-coast experiences in old Lancashire, that picturesque maritime county of northwestern England, which is bounded on the west by the Irish Sea. At all events Edward Moran loved the sea, and this love guided every stroke of his brush in depicting his favorite element. No artist in this country, or perhaps in the world, has ever painted such water, and it was not many years after his first successes in Philadelphia that his fame spread throughout the United States, and he was easily recognized as its first marine painter. Fame and prosperity, however, did not turn his head, as they so frequently do with little men, but never with men of true genius. On the contrary, he worked with redoubled zeal and industry as he grew older, so that the number of works which he produced is marvellous.

Among his famous paintings, besides the thirteen herein described, may be mentioned the following:

"Virginia Sands."

"A Squally Day off Newport."

"Massachusetts Bay."

"New York Harbor."

"The Yacht Race."

"The Battle of Svold."

"Philadelphia from the New Park."

"Minot's Ledge Light-House."

"White Cliffs of Albion."

"Off Block Island."

"Return of the Fishers."

"Outward Bound."

"Low Tide."

"The Gathering Storm."

"Sentinel Rock, Maine."

"Toilers of the Sea."

"Launching of the Life-Boat." (1865.)

"View on Delaware Bay." (1867.)

"Evening on Vineyard Sound." (1867.)

"Pinchyn Castle, North Wales." (1867.)

"Moonrise at Nahant." (1867.)

"The Lord Staying the Waters." (1867.)

"Coast Scene Near Digby." (1868.)

"Departure of the United States Fleet for Port Royal." (1868.)

"After a Gale." (1869.)

"On the Narrows." (1873.)

"The Commerce of Nations Paying Homage to Liberty" (1877)—the great picture which came into the possession of Mr. Joseph Drexel, the banker—an allegory suggested by the then proposed Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

"Young Americans out on a Holiday." (1882.)

"Life-Saving Patrol: New Jersey Coast." (1889.)

"Melodies of the Sea." (1890.)

"South Coast of England." (1900.)

But space forbids the complete enumeration of even his more notable works, which may be counted by the hundreds.

Mr. Moran, like all men of genius, felt his own strength, though he never overrated it; but as a result of this self-consciousness he would not brook depreciation, and when, in May, 1868, the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, of which he was a member, had hung some of his pictures in an inconspicuous and detrimental position in its gallery, he resorted to a novel expedient for showing his displeasure. On "varnishing day," prior to the opening of the exhibition to the public, he used a mixture of beer and porter, combined with a dry light red, for the purpose of "varnishing" his paintings, but the effect of which was that they were all coated with a beautiful opaque red substance, so that none of them could be recognized, and yet a substance which he could remove, when so inclined, without injuring the pictures at all. This called forth a storm of criticism from the "Hanging Committee" and the wiseacres of the Academy, but he was fully sustained in his course by public opinion and the press, and, instead of diminishing, it added to his fame as an artist and certainly to his reputation for the courage of his convictions.

Mr. Moran was not only a great artist, but a man of genial and companionable qualities, which endeared him to all with whom he came in contact. He, furthermore, was not only an artist who used oil, water-color and pastel with equal facility, and painted landscapes and figure pieces as well as marines, but was versatile in his talents. His musical instincts were marked, and, although self-taught, he played on a number of instruments, and he had also, through years of industrious reading and study, become thoroughly well-informed and an interesting conversationalist. He was of a most generous nature, and was not only ever ready to assist young artists with advice and material aid as well, but also, when the occasion arose, to devote the fruit of his labors to any meritorious charitable object. Thus, for example, in March, 1871, he exhibited in Philadelphia seventy-five of his landscapes and marines, all of which he used in illustrating a beautiful catalogue entitled "Land and Sea," and not only gave the entire profits of this exhibition and of the sale of the catalogue, but also the price obtained for one of his important paintings, entitled "The Relief Ship Entering Havre," to aid the sufferers of the Franco-Prussian war.

He did not reach the culminating point of excellence in his work in middle life or shortly thereafter, like so many other painters, but on the contrary grew in breadth and power with advancing years, so that the Thirteen Historical Paintings, described in this little book, although he gave them the finishing touches only shortly before his death, constitute his greatest achievement.

About the year 1872 Mr. Moran sought a still wider field for his activities in removing from Philadelphia to the City of New York, where for thirty years he was a conspicuous and admired figure in metropolitan life, and in his studios, surrounded by all the luxury and comfort that prosperity could suggest, he and his talented and hospitable wife drew around them a circle of artists, authors, musicians and notable men of all classes, among whom may be mentioned actors like Joseph Jefferson, F. F. Mackay (both pupils of Mr. Moran) and Charles W. Couldock, writers like Richard Watson Gilder and John Clark Ridpath, lawyers like Col. Edward C. James and Robert Ingersoll, art connoisseurs like Samuel P. Avery and William Schaus, sculptors like Frederic A. Bartholdi and James W. A. Macdonald, and of course a host of artists such as Edwin Abbey, Albert Bierstadt, Edwin H. Blashfield, John C. Brown, Thomas B. Craig, Hamilton Hamilton, Constant Meyer, Paul de LongprÉ, Henry W. Ranger, Vasili Vereschagin and Napoleon Sarony.

It may be added that Mrs. Moran's maiden name was Annette Parmentier, and that she was a Southern girl of French descent from the noted scientist Antoine Augustin Parmentier, who was the first to introduce the potato into France, for which he was decorated by Louis XVI as a public benefactor, and honored by a statue erected in his native town of Bordeaux. Mr. Moran married Annette (his second wife) in the year 1869, and under his instruction and guidance her own talent as an artist was developed, and some of her paintings, among them landscapes entitled "A Staten Island Study," "The Fisherman's Return," and other pictures, were not only exhibited and greatly admired, but were deemed of sufficient importance to be reproduced by prominent art publishers. She survived her husband by about three and one-half years, having died, at an advanced age, in the City of New York on November 7, 1904.

In his art Mr. Moran followed mainly the bent of his own genius, though if he was influenced by any other artists to any extent it was by Clarkson Stanfield and Turner, whom he greatly admired and many of whose pictures, for the sake of practice, he copied. He was undoubtedly also influenced in a general way, as are all eminent artists, by studying the master works of the world in Europe, where for that purpose he spent some time in the year 1861 and again in 1878 and also in subsequent years.

Of Edward Moran it may be truly said that he is another notable example of the fact that true genius is not baffled or impaired through adverse circumstances or the most humble beginnings, but soars ever upward and onward until it achieves its mission, and compels the recognition and admiration of the world, to which it is entitled.