Grand Canal, Venice

Best known for his panoramic views of the American West, Thomas Moran also applied the same romantic sensibility to his series of Venetian landscapes produced for the American commercial market. In this particular view of the Grand Canal, likely inspired by British landscapist J. M. W. Turner , Moran includes well-known touristic highlights like the Doge’s Palace, and local flavor in the form of the foregrounded merchants. Yet, it is the blazing crimson, orange, and yellow-gold sky, and the rainbow-hued canal that cover most of the canvas’s surface area—and most immediately impact the viewer.