Mary Nimmo Moran was an American 19th-century landscape printmaker, specializing in etchings. She completed roughly 70 landscape etchings, which included scenes of England and Scotland, as well as Long Island, New Jersey, Florida and Pennsylvania. In 1881, she was one of eight Americans and the first female fellow elected to London's Royal Society of Painter-Etchers. She was the wife of American artist and illustrator Thomas Moran. Mary Nimmo Moran's landscape "View of Newark from the Meadows" is in the collection of The Newark Museum of Art.
Biography
Nimmo Moran was born in Strathaven, Scotland in 1842 to Mary and Alfred Nimmo, a family of weavers. Following the death of her mother in 1847, when Nimmo Moran was five, her father moved the young girl and her brother to America, settling down in Crescentville, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1863 she began studying with her neighbor Thomas Moran, who was then gaining a local reputation as an artist. Two years later, the couple married and moved to Philadelphia where they had two daughters and a son. In 1879, her husband introduced Nimmo Moran to the technique of etching by directly working onto a copper plate. Her first etching was a Florida landscape she created from a memory of a family trip in 1877. She made most of her etchings on location near her various homes, as responsibilities to her growing family allowed her to travel only occasionally. She was elected to the Society of Painter-Etchers of New York and became the only woman among the 65 original fellows of London's Royal Society of Painter-Etchers. Her prints were recognized for their boldness and originality, and were collected by the British critic John Ruskin among others. Mary Nimmo Moran often signed her etchings "M. Nimmo Moran" or "M. N. Moran", leading many people, including the membership committees to believe she was a male artist. The Moran family relocated to Newark, New Jersey in 1872. In 1884 they moved to East Hampton, Long Island, which became the subject of many of Nimmo Moran's most successful etchings. The Moran home in East Hampton became the center of a productive artists' colony and is today a National Historic Landmark. Nimmo Moran exhibited her work at the Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. Nimmo Moran was described as simultaneously charming, personable, and bright and modest and humble. Notably, she was well-versed in many different fields of artistry.
Death
Moran died of typhoid fever in 1899, after nursing her daughter Ruth through the disease, and was buried beside Goose Pond, a subject of many of her etchings, near her home in East Hampton.
