Thomas Moran (1837-1926), ‘Moonlight, Icebergs in Mid Atlantic’, 1910, Oil on unlined canvas, 20 X 30 inches, Private collection.
In late April of 1890 on a trip to Venice, Moran's ship was en route to Antwerp when it passed an iceberg. He made a rapid pencil drawing and as he could not sketch quickly enough, he described verbally: 'water pouring over the sides of the berg, deep blue water and rollers capped with foam'. This was painted about twenty years after his sighting of the icebergs in the middle of the Atlantic.
Thomas Moran was an extremely famous landscape painter and this one was one of his lesser known 'sea' paintings... This painting is a riot of clouds, waves, floating ice mountains with the ice resembling rocks and vice versa. By confusing the distinctions of a foamy head of a wave with the sharp edges of ice, Moran artfully engages us in deception of visual detail that can be so reminiscent of an open raging sea.
