It may be added that Mrs. Moran's maiden name was Annette Parmentier, and that she was a Southern girl of French descent from the noted scientist Antoine Augustin Parmentier, who was the first to introduce the potato into France, for which he was decorated by Louis XVI as a public benefactor, and honored by a statue erected in his native town of Bordeaux. Mr. Moran married Annette (his second wife) in the year 1869, and under his instruction and guidance her own talent as an artist was developed, and some of her paintings, among them landscapes entitled "A Staten Island Study," "The Fisherman's Return," and other pictures, were not only exhibited and greatly admired, but were deemed of sufficient importance to be reproduced by prominent art publishers. She survived her husband by about three and one-half years, having died, at an advanced age, in the City of New York on November 7, 1904.
[Illustration: Copyright, 1905, by Theodore Sutro.
MRS. EDWARD MORAN (NÉE ANNETTE PARMENTIER) From a painting by Thomas Sidney Moran]
In his art Mr. Moran followed mainly the bent of his own genius, though if he was influenced by any other artists to any extent it was by Clarkson Stanfield and Turner, whom he greatly admired and many of whose pictures, for the sake of practice, he copied. He was undoubtedly also influenced in a general way, as are all eminent artists, by studying the master works of the world in Europe, where for that purpose he spent some time in the year 1861 and again in 1878 and also in subsequent years.
Of Edward Moran it may be truly said that he is another notable example of the fact that true genius is not baffled or impaired through adverse circumstances or the most humble beginnings, but soars ever upward and onward until it achieves its mission, and compels the recognition and admiration of the world, to which it is entitled.
[Illustration: Copyright, 1898, by Edward Moran.]
THE OCEAN--THE HIGHWAY OF ALL NATIONS.[C]
This picture has already been briefly referred to, and is considered by some critics the greatest of the thirteen. Probably no such sublime ocean has ever been painted. How thoroughly it appeals to those who best know the sea is illustrated by the blunt but expressive compliment bestowed upon it by Admiral Hopkins of the English navy when, in 1892, he saw it in the Union League Club of New York, where it was being privately shown. After silently studying it for some minutes he turned to Mr. Joseph H. Choate, whose guest he was, and said: "I have always believed that only an Englishman could paint the sea, but it seems that I had to come to America to look upon the most almighty sea that I have ever beheld on canvas."