Edward Percy Moran

American, 1862 - 1935

BiographyColonial revival artist Edward Percy Moran, known as Percy, was born in Philadelphia into a family of prominent American artists. His father, Edward Moran, was a notable marine painter who was born in England, and emigrated to Philadelphia with his family in 1844. Edward Moran’s three brothers were all artists, with Thomas Moran the best-known as a painter of the American west. Other artists in the family include Percy’s brother (John) Leon, and his cousin Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, also a painter of colonial revival scenes. Percy Moran studied with his father and traveled with him to Paris in 1874, where he apparently received a military training, and remained until 1880. He then returned to America and studied at the National Academy of Design in New York, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. By 1883 he had opened a studio in New York, where he became known as a “genre artist,” portraying scenes of children, peasant life, and young women. By 1894 he had contributed a series of watercolors to the publication Children of Colonial Days. He was a member of the American Watercolor Society and received the Hallgarten Prize from the National Academy of Design in 1886, and the first gold medal of the American Art Association in 1888. Moran died in New York City in 1935.

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