Tower at Tower Falls, Yellowstone

Thomas Moran

National Gallery of Art

A tall, reddish-brown, spearhead-shaped rock formation slices up from a churning river into the sky in this vertical watercolor painting. To the right, a lower formation has a flattened top with what appear to be teeth-like boulders along the top. The river flows across the lower third of the painting and is painted with dark blues and greens, with white highlights suggesting fast-moving water. Several large, rounded boulders sit in the river and along its shore in the bottom center of the composition. To the right, the sandy bank slopes upward and is scattered with rounded stones and tufts of dry grass. In the background, faint outlines of tall cliffs and distant hills fade into a pale, misty sky. Light radiates from behind the central rock formation. The artist signed and dated the watercolor in the lower right corner, “TMoran 1872,” with the T and M conjoined to make a monogram.