Magnificent mountains.

Enduring Ideas

We have an interdependent relationship with the land: we depend on the land for shelter and sustenance, and it depends on us for protection. We have a responsibility to conserve our public land: our national forests, parks, and preserves in mountains, valleys, deserts, and shores. One way to increase awareness of our endangered national heritage is to teach our youth the importance of our land through the study of selected works of art.

Magnificent Mountains: Making a Collage

Art Exemplars

Alfred Bierstadt, In the Mountains. Ansel Adams, The Tetons--Snake River. Marsden Hartley, New Mexico Landscape. Thomas Moran, Chasm of the Colorado, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and The Teton Range, 1897. Oil on canvas.

Lesson Overview

After students have studied mountain shapes and environments, they will explore the differences between mountain painters of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They will create a collage composition of a mountain range using torn and cut paper to gain understanding of overlapping ridges, unique shapes, and colors.

Students learn about:

1. drawing mountain forms by analyzing selected mountain scenes in art and photography.

2. observing how mountains overlap, recede in space, and have unique colors.

3. comparing depiction of space and the expressive style and technical qualities of Thomas Moran and Marsden Hartley.

Guiding Inquiry

* Direct the class in analyzing Moran's painting The Teton Range.

* Describe the colors, shapes, and lines you see in the painting, and the feeling they give you.

* What time of day, of year, and what kind of climate is painted? (summer morning, clear day with cloud movement)

* What style is the artwork? (realistic)

* What technique did Moran use? (smooth, blended colors)

* How does he make the mountain, rocks, and trees look solid and 3-D? (different values, shading)

* How does Moran show distance? (overlapping, atmospheric perspective, or emphasizing foreground, middle ground, and background)

* What is the artist's point of view? (straight on)

* Divide the class into three groups: The first group will research Moran's life and make a presentation to the class. The second group will lead a discussion on how Moran worked both in the field and studio, what the differences between the two methods might be, and what field conditions might have been like in the 1800s. The third group will create a chart on comparing and contrasting Moran's mountains to those of twentieth-century artist Marsden Hartley.

Guiding Expression

* Show Moran's work. Have students comment on space, color, composition, and the feeling of the painting. Study photographs, prints, or videos of mountain areas. Visit an art museum and study how artists have painted "mountainscapes." View and discuss other artworks found on the Internet.

* Select a mountain scene to be created on 12 x 18" (28 x 46 cm) colored construction paper. Tear or cut the mountain shapes out of different-colored paper. Do not use pencil. Add other shapes of rocks, trees, and animals. Arrange them on the background color to create a composition. Glue down after the arrangement is complete. Add a few details with crayon or colored pen. Avoid stereotypical suns and simple triangular mountain peaks.

About the Artist

Thomas Moran (1837-1926) was born in England. Most of his family of sixteen children became artists. Moran became an expert printmaker but worked in watercolor and oil in his spare time. He studied the landscapes and seascapes of J. M. W. Turner and French and Italian masters.

He traveled to the American West as a member of a geological survey party and made many sketches of hot springs, geysers, lake, falls, and towers. Moran's work was partially responsible in convincing Congress to set aside Yellowstone as the first national park in 1872. His incentive was to interpret the glorious scenery of American land and help others appreciate its grandiose beauty.

Many of his works were commissioned by the railroad companies, so his artwork served to open up these wonders of the West by encouraging tourism; a peak in the Teton range was named Mt. Moran after the artist.

Moran was a "romantic" artist and took artistic license to add or subtract actual landscape details from his work. Despite this tendency, Moran was highly skilled in painting trees, rocks, water, and sky both in watercolor and oil. He made many pencil and watercolor sketches in the field and returned to his home studio in the East to paint his large, sometimes panoramic, paintings.

Visit www.davis-art.com/schoolarts for examples of student artwork, additional questions, activities for environmental awareness, and links to the art exemplars mentioned in this article.

Heather Anderson is a former art teacher at Fresno City College in Fresno, California.