WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The awesome beauty of the American West combined with the skills and imagination of Thomas Moran are showcased in a grand retrospective at the National Gallery of Art. In addition to Moran's celebrated, epic oil paintings of the West, which form the heart of the display, his superb watercolors and rarely exhibited images of industrial scenes, marinescapes, as well as views of Long Island, Italy, England and Mexico document both the diverse talent and extensive travels of this titan of Nineteenth Century American art.

This first-ever Moran retrospective brings together over 100 of his finest works. Of special interest is a triptych of three panoramic Western canvases united for the first time, plus "The Three Tetons," which hangs in the Oval Office of the White House, and a selection of the artist's original watercolor sketches of Yellowstone. The latter helped inspire Congress to establish our first national park in 1872. The exhibition coincides with the 125th anniversary celebration of the creation of Yellowstone National Park.

Admirably organized by Nancy K. Anderson, the National Gallery's associate curator of American and British paintings, in association with the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Okla., "Thomas Moran" continues in Washington through January 11, 1998. It then travels to the Gilcrease, which has the largest collection of Moran's works (February 8-May 10), and the Seattle Art Museum (June 11-August 30).

Filled with unforgettable images, several of which have become icons of American art, the show is bound to cause a stir at each stop. The exhibition is made possible by the support of The Boeing Company.

Moran (1837-1926) was born in the factory town of Bolton, England, the son of a hand-loom weaver who, upon being displaced by the labor-saving machinery of the Industrial Revolution, emigrated with his family to Philadelphia in 1844. Following a brief apprenticeship with a wood-engraver, young Thomas began working in the Philadelphia studio of his older brother Edward, who became a distinguished marine painter.

Guided by his brother and informal instructions from several local artists, Moran honed his skills on sketching forays in the forests around the city. His early paintings, such as the precise, color-filled "Autumn Woods" (1865), replete with a Byronic figure in the left foreground, were strongly influenced by John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites, who expressed their love of the natural world in meticulously detailed, brightly-hued landscapes.

Moran found even greater inspiration in the works of England's leading landscape painter, J.M.W. Turner, which he knew from prints and engravings in the City of Brotherly Love. In order to see the British master's grand canvases first-hand, especially his high-keyed colors, Thomas and his brother Edward journeyed to London in 1862. After making copies of Turner's paintings, they followed his sketching routes along the English coast, observing the artistic liberties he took with actual settings.

Thomas Moran's most ambitious early picture, "Children of the Mountain" (1867), exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867, looks like a scene of the American West. In fact, it was an artistic invention, because at the time the artist had never been west of the Mississippi. Four years later, however, Moran used the painting as collateral to help finance the Western trip that changed the course of his career.

In 1871, alerted to the picture potential of the then unchartered region around Yellowstone, Moran arranged to accompany the first government-sponsored survey of the area, headed by geologist Ferdinand V. Hayden. Journeying via the newly-completed transcontinental railroad, the skinny Eastern greenhorn joined the expedition in Virginia City, Mont. Its mission was to measure and map the region variously described as "the place where Hell bubbled up" and "Nature's Wonderland."

During the next two months, often working side by side with William Henry Jackson (1834-1942), the group's photographer, Moran completed dozens of watercolor studies of Yellowstone's geysers, hot springs, mudspots, waterfalls and spectacular vistas. Quickly composed on site and loosely sketched, the broad strokes of transparent colors were augmented with penciled notes about topography and colors. They formed the basis for exquisitely painted studio watercolors.

"Great Springs of the Firehole River," with a notation about "stumps" and "Liberty Cap and Clematis Gulch," both of 1871, are among the original sketches loaned by Yellowstone National Park to the current exhibition. "Old Faithful" (1873), its tiny human figures emphasizing the grandeur of the natural wonder, reflects Moran's skill as a studio watercolorist. By this time he was signing his works with a three-letter colophon, "TYM," standing for Thomas "Yellowstone" Moran, as in the lower left of "Old Faithful."

Shortly after Moran returned East, Hayden and others, including railroad executives, began promoting the idea that Yellowstone should be preserved and protected as a "national park." Since no member of Congress had seen the region, Hayden and his colleagues brought Moran's watercolor sketches to Capitol Hill, along with Jackson's panoramic photographs from the 1871 expedition. The eye-popping colors and grand vistas of these images were instrumental in the Congressional vote to designate Yellowstone as the first national park in 1872.

Soon thereafter Congress appropriated $10,000, an extravagant sum, to purchase Moran's giant oil painting, "Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone" (1872), catapulting the artist's career. On a canvas measuring 7 by 12 feet, Moran created a composite vista of Yellowstone Canyon, its distant falls surrounded by the canyon's astonishing golden walls. It was a tour de force by a brilliant colorist applying Turner's daring palette to the stupendous scenery of the American West.

To underscore the magnitude of the setting, Moran placed a group of small figures in the foreground that included Hayden and himself. The first landscape in the Capitol, the painting was hung in Statuary Hall.

Two years later, following an expedition to the Grand Canyon in Arizona with famed explorer John Wesley Powell, Moran completed a companion epic of equal size, "Chasm of the Colorado" (1873-74), which was also purchased for $10,000 by Congress and displayed in the Capitol. The property of the Department of the Interior, "Grand Canyon" and "Chasm" are normally on view at the National Museum of American Art, in magnificent reproductions of their original, ornate gold frames.

In 1874, after seeing photographs of a Rocky Mountain peak with a cross of snow on its side, Moran trekked with Hayden to Colorado to make the field sketches needed to complete the third great Western landscape, "Mountain of the Holy Cross" (1875). As photographs in the exhibition document, in this evocation of this natural emblem of Christianity, the artist took great liberties with the depiction of the foreground, especially the dramatic waterfall.

Moran wanted to exhibit the trilogy of Western landscapes at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, in part to show his home town what he had accomplished, but Congress refused to loan the two paintings from the Capitol. "Holy Cross" alone was displayed.

Intended by the artist to form an awe-inspiring Western triptych, the three monumental canvases are seen together for the first time in this show. Reflecting national pride in the natural wonders of the West, they also suggest the continuing debate about balancing "progress" in the form of Western expansion with the protection of "sacred landscapes."

On his way to Yellowstone for the first time in 1871, Moran passed through another dramatic landscape with which he would also become closely associated, the Green River Valley of Wyoming. Once a gathering place for fur trappers, the site had become a Western railroad terminus. By the time Moran stepped off the train, the burgeoning riverside town had a church, hotel, schoolhouse and brewery, as documented by Andrew Joseph Russell photographs in the exhibition.

As was his wont, Moran erased all signs of man's intrusion, depicting the stark grandeur of the castellated buttes lining the river in gorgeous, bright hues. Rather than railway tracks, he showed Indian caravans in the foreground, nostalgic reminders of prior life in this spectacular setting.

Moran's series of paintings of the Green River were so popular that he completed some 40 canvases on the theme over the course of 30 years. Suggesting the artist's continuing appeal, his large and vivid show-stopper, "Green River Cliffs, Wyoming" (1881) was sold at Christie's in 1994 for $2,752,500.

By 1876 Moran had established himself as a major landscape painter, rivaling German-born Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), who had introduced Western panoramas to the Eastern public a decade earlier. The two artists competed for patronage and Congressional favor. Bierstadt, whose romantic vistas took even greater liberties with reality than Moran's, painted exclusively in oil. Moran, on the other hand, became a maestro of watercolors, as demonstrated in scores of dazzling examples in the retrospective.

Over the course of five decades Moran returned to his beloved West frequently, often visiting Grand Canyon and Yellowstone and producing fresh images. Capitalizing on the market he created, he produced a number of later pictures that reflected the increasing popularity of these sites as tourist destinations.

"Golden Gate, Yellowstone National Park" (1894) shows the road that had been built to make the national park more accessible to visitors. "Bright Angel Trail" of 1904 includes a group of tourists riding up the canyon wall along a popular trail, while another group has pitched a tent in the center.

An especially nostalgic field sketch recorded Moran's return in 1892, with photographer Jackson, to the Western landscapes that had made them famous two decades before. "In the Lava Beds" (1892) is a small, spare composition in which the massive, multicolored walls of the canyon are juxtaposed against delicate wisps of smoke rising from the campfire built by the artist and his companions. The tiny, isolated camera mounted on spindly legs in the right foreground pays homage to Jackson, Moran's expedition partner and close friend.

At the same time that he was enjoying fame, fortune and critical acclaim for his depictions of the American West, Moran's broad interests and wanderlust led to works drawn from historical and literary sources, marinescapes, pastoral views, lush tropical landscapes and even urban industrial scenes. Among the latter images, a standout is "Lower Manhattan from Communipaw, New Jersey" (1880), a shimmering view of the city's smoke-filled skyline as seen from across the Hudson River.

Moran's interest in marine subjects was stimulated in part by his move to a summer home in East Hampton, Long Island in 1884. Building a cottage and studio on Main Street, with ready access to the beach, he was able to closely examine the sea. "The Much Resounding Sea" (1884), the only Moran oil owned by the National Gallery, exemplifies his ability to depict the power and drama of the roiling ocean.

Trying to adjust to changing times, Moran also focused on the Long Island landscape, creating quiet scenes of pastoral tranquility that contrasted with and came to rival his Western paintings in popularity. "June, East Hampton" (1895), with its carefully delineated trees and bucolic setting, suggests the artist's adaptability to his newish surroundings.

A tireless traveler, Moran recorded views during visits to Cuba and Mexico, and found particular joy in sojourns in Venice starting in 1886. Already familiar with his idol Turner's colorful renderings of the historic city, Moran demonstrated his skill at capturing interactions among old facades, sunlight, exotic boats and reflecting water in brightly-hued watercolors and oils.

Nearly a quarter century after a peak in the Grand Teton Mountains of Wyoming had been named in his honor, Moran created "The Three Tetons" (1895), an idyllic oil of splendid peaks that he once called "perhaps the finest pictorial range in the United States or even in N[orth] America." This compact image occupies a prominent place on the walls of the Oval Office in the Clinton White House.

The death of Moran's beloved wife, talented artist Mary Nimmo, in 1899, as a result of having ministered to fever-ridden soldiers returning from the Spanish-American War, was a great blow to the painter. Shaken, he sought solace in the West, traveling the next year to Shoshone Falls on the Snake River in Idaho. At the time the cataract was a magnificent sight, known as the "Niagara of the West," and Moran more than did justice to it in his last panoramic Western landscape, "Shoshone Falls on the Snake River" (1900).

Perhaps in an effort to outdo Frederic E. Church's acclaimed "Niagara Falls" (1857), Moran pulled out all the stops in this foreboding, 72 by 144 inch depiction of water pounding through the gorge bracketed by massive stone walls under dramatic, dark thunderclouds. Just a few months after Moran visited the site, an extensive irrigation project siphoned off the Snake River, reducing the mighty water flow the artist so majestically immortalized.

When shown back east, "Shoshone Falls" won praise from some, but was criticized by others who indicated they had seen enough of the "grand and panoramic in nature" and denigrated the painter as an "old guard" artist. Moran never again attempted a painting on this scale.

Blessed with energy and good health, Moran continued to travel and paint with skill and vigor into his 80s. When he died at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif., in 1926, just before his 90th birthday, he was hailed as the "dean of American landscape painters" and the "father of the National Parks."

As this superb exhibition amply demonstrates, Moran brought professionalism, imagination, perseverance and abundant skills to the task of painting some of the nation's most spectacular natural wonders. The view many Americans hold of the American West, both its reality and its myth, was shaped by the brush of this admirable and gifted British emigre.

The exhibition catalogue, as special as the show itself, is readable, comprehensive and fully illustrated. Written by curator Anderson, with contributions by Moran authorities Anne Morand, curator of art at the Gilcrease; Joni L. Kinsey, professor of art history at the University of Iowa; and Thomas P. Bruhn, acting director of the William Benton Museum of the University of Connecticut, Storrs; it provides important new scholarship about the artist.

The 400-page volume, published by the National Gallery in association with Yale University Press, includes an illustrated chronology, color plates of works in the retrospective, and appendices of Moran documents. One appendix examines and illustrates in color the series of chromolithographs of Moran works produced by the Louis Prang Company of Boston in 1876, generally recognized as the finest of their kind in the last century.

The National Gallery is sponsoring a two-day Moran symposium in November. Like admission to the museum, it is free. On November 14, 1-5 pm, in a program designed for conservation professionals but open to the public, Morand and conservators from the National Gallery will discuss "Conservation Issues: New Discoveries Regarding Thomas Moran's Materials and Technique." On November 15, from 10 am-5 pm, there will be a session focusing on art historical and cultural issues, including new research on Moran, intended for the general public. Speakers on "Thomas Moran: New Perspectives" will include Linda Ferber of the Brooklyn Museum of Art; Kinsey; Richard West Sellars of the National Park Service; Andrew Wilton of London's Tate Gallery; and Donald Worster of the University of Kansas.