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Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
THOMAS MORAN The Rapids above Niagara.
Etching printed in dark brownish black, 1885-86. 150x204 mm; 6x8¼ inches, full margins. Signed in pencil, lower left. A very good impression of this scarce, early etching.
The Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, Tulsa, where there is a pencil and gouache study of Niagara Falls by Moran (1837-1926), notes that, "When Moran visited Niagara Falls in 1881, he would have found it surrounded by factories, tourist venues, and gift shops. The waterfall attracted fifty thousand to sixty thousand tourists every year by the 1850s. There were no regulations to curtail development, so entrepreneurs flocked to the area to invest in tourism and, for those with enough capital, industry as well. Thus, both lumber mills and tacky souvenir stores sprang up within sight of the falls. One would not know this from the many sketches, etchings, wood engravings, and oil paintings that Moran and other artists of his generation created of the famous cataract."
