Thomas and Mary Nimmo Moran Studio

ABOUT

The Studio was designed by the Morans in the Romantic Victorian cottage style with strong Queen Anne elements. There are touches of Colonial Revival and Italianate as well. There are approximately 10 rooms, with the studio space taking-up the vast majority of the first floor. The exterior color-palette is influenced by the aesthetic movement.

When visitors enter through the carved paneled double doors, the scale of the Studio immediately bursts out. The room size, the high ceilings, the huge plate-glass windows are awesome. Moran certainly planned on his workspace to overwhelm this guest. The balcony, the bay window and the antique architectural elements (he gathered in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood) add a sense of history to his construction. This assemblage brings out the artist’s environment of creativity.

The house is sighted on a rise overlooking Town Pond facing the east light. The Studio windows bring in the north light that streams in from an enormous plate glass window. Historic photographs show the three locations the artist most often worked from. Items always on view are his drafting table, a palette, bronze bust and several other small decorative items that were part of The Studio’s original furnishings.

SPECIAL RESOURCES

“Her etching has a virile strength that sets it in a class by itself. Her plates, as has been frequently said, would never reveal her sex, since they disprove the popular idea that the production of a woman naturally betrays feminine characteristics.”

— Morris T. Everett, “Brush & Pencil,” April 1901, in reference to Mary Nimmo Moran

“Despite the fact that Mr. Moran has spent the last eight years in California as a concession to the rigors of winter… he returns each autumn to spend a few months in his old haunts. Two spots on earth most completely satisfy Mr. Moran. One is the Grand Canyon, and the other is East Hampton, Long Island… He basks in the beauty of long-familiar scenes.”

— Harriet Sisson Gillespie “International Studio,” 1924, in reference to Thomas Moran

Mary Nimmo Moran (1842–1899)

Mary Nimmo Moran came into her own as an artist in 1879, when her artist husband, Thomas Moran, introduced her to the technique of etching. Working in this medium she achieved immediate success: she was elected to membership in the Society of Painters and Etchers of New York; she became the only woman among the 65 original fellows of London’s Royal Society of Painters and Etchers; her prints won several awards and were collected by such prominent individuals as the English critic John Ruskin. Rather than being overshadowed by her spouse, on many occasions when both husband and wife exhibited etchings in the same show, it was Mary’s work that was singled out for praise.

In 1884, the Morans built a new home on Long Island, the surrounding area of which became the subject of many of her most successful etchings. She died in 1899 of typhoid fever, after nursing their daughter Ruth through a bout of the same disease. (nmwa.org)

Thomas Moran (1837–1926)

At age seven, Thomas Moran and his family emigrated from England to Philadelphia, where he was apprenticed briefly to a wood engraver. Although best known as a painter, Moran was also a prolific illustrator. In 1862, after a trip to Lake Superior, which inspired a series of views related to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Hiawatha, he and his brother Edward traveled to England. In 1871 Moran accompanied F. V. Hayden’s geological survey of Yellowstone as a guest artist, with funding from Scribner’s and railroad financier Jay Cooke. During the expedition Moran worked closely with photographer William H. Jackson. In 1872 Moran visited Yosemite and in 1873 joined John Wesley Powell’s geological survey of the Grand Canyon and Colorado River. In 1874 he was again with Hayden in Colorado, where he visited the newly discovered Mount of the Holy Cross. Although most of his life was spent in the East, he traveled west frequently, often as a guest artist of the Santa Fe Railway. (americanart.si.edu)

_{Thomas & Mary Nimmo Moran Home & Studio. Photograph by Jeff Heatley, courtesy East Hampton Historical Society.}

_{Thomas’s bedroom at Thomas & Mary Nimmo Moran Home & Studio. Photograph courtesy East Hampton Historical Society.}

_{Photograph courtesy East Hampton Historical Society.}

LEARN MORE

Thomas Moran first arrived in East Hampton in early September of 1878 as a guest of the Tile Club. He was back at Montauk in July of 1879. He and Mary Nimmo Moran, an artist at the forefront of the etching revival, continued to summer in East Hampton Village until they purchased a ¾ acre lot on Main Street in 1883. Their studio/cottage was ready by September 1884. The Morans went to East Hampton annually until Mary’s untimely death in 1899 and when in 1922, Thomas Moran’s own health began to fail. After Thomas Moran‘s death in 1926, his youngest daughter Ruth inherited The Studio and spent her summers there until she died in 1948. Her sister Mary Moran Tassin sold The Studio that year to Condie Lamb. He and his wife had the property designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977. It was given to Guild Hall in 1990 (with life tenancy); an arts museum in East Hampton. The Studio was transferred to the Thomas Moran Trust in 2008 and, after a lengthy restoration project, opened to the public in 2018.

Thomas & Mary Nimmo Moran had three (3) children, Paul Nimmo Moran (1864-1907), Mary Scott Moran (1867-1955) and Ruth Bedford Moran (1870-1948). Thomas’s brother Edward and his two artist sons, Edward Percy Moran (1862-1935) and John Leon Moran (1864-1941) were often house guests. All the members of this extended family were musicians and theatrically inclined. The Studio was often used for dances and performances. The family’s specialty were Tableau Vivants, which were often preformed from the front porch of The Studio. They also brought back a gondola, in 1889, from Venice and were often seen enjoying a ride on Hook Pond on summer evenings. The gondolier was always appropriately costumed.

One summer, Town Pond (directly across the street from The Studio) went almost dry, leaving a stinking mess. Moran got permission from the Town of East Hampton to run a hose across Main Street and pump water from his well, into the muddy pond bed. He kept the pond looking pretty and eliminated the stench.

The Moran family was very socially inclined. They were founding members of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and the Maidstone Club. They supported many community events and often orchestrated fund-raising programs for the purchase of library books or buying a watering cart to keep the dust down on Main Street. Thomas’s daughter Ruth was a member of the Guild Hall Players, performed as a gypsy fortune teller at the annual summer L.V.I.S. Fair. Thomas created a watercolor poster for Ruth’s summer poetry readings, which still exists today.

Since Moran’s training (by his brother Edward) was academy-oriented, his collection of several thousand drawings and watercolor sketches were the foundation for this finished oils and watercolors. Because he worked from these sketches, he could paint any scene, anytime, anywhere. We know that the great Specters from the North was painted in East Hampton. He used the work’s first showing at Clinton Hall for local fundraising. Many of his East Hampton subjects were certainly conceived and painted here. Almost all his East End etching plates were created here in the Village.

IN COLLABORATION WITH THE NATIONAL TRUST