Bridge in the Pass of Glencoe, Scotland

Early in his career, the Hudson River School painter Thomas Moran steeped himself in British mezzotint engraving. He acquired both Richard Earlom’s Liber Veritatis reproductions after Claude Lorrain and J. M. W. Turner’s Liber Studiorum and pored over them. These formative pictorial series would long resonate with Moran’s landscapes, whether of the American West or the hills of Scotland. Turner’s “mountainous” category, and his Mer de Glace print of an alpine Swiss glacier, may have inspired Moran’s dramatic view of Glencoe. Both convey a sense of spontaneity and on-the-spot draftsmanship, with mezzotint shading adding volume.