307 The Herd Returning Home

SOLD
Winning Bid Undisclosed
This item SOLD at 2015 Apr 11 @ 16:18UTC-7 : PDT/MST
Category Western Americana
Auction Currency USD
Start Price NA
Estimated at 20,000.00 - 30,000.00 USD
The Herd Returning Home
Artist: Moran, PeterDate of Birth: 1841-1914
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 42 x 84 1/2 inches
Signed: Signed lower left and dated 1875

Peter Moran was the youngest of the Moran brothers. Like them, he began his career as a lithographer but he preferred painting and chose instead to study with his older brothers, Thomas and Edward. Peter Moran visited New Mexico as early as 1864 and painted throughout the West on trips with his brothers, though he made his home in Philadelphia where he specialized in pastoral landscapes and paintings of cattle in the manner of Rosa Bonheur and Edwin Landseer. The Herd Returning Home has a 19th century feel and flow: light and dark play off one another in the dramatic storm-charged atmosphere, its shadows on the land, and in the variety of colors in the cattle. The herdsman, his back leaning away from the black clouds, is bent on making it home to shelter before the clouds break. Just as he labors to protect his herd, so the cowÑsurely an old English or American breedÑturns to shelter her calf.