Mary Moran (1842–1899), the wife of the landscape painter Thomas Moran, achieved an international reputation as one of the best American painter-etchers of the late-nineteenth century. She was known for her vigorous etchings of summer and twilight skies over woods and water, the sites of which were those near her summer home in East Hampton, the meadows of New Jersey, or the hills of Pennsylvania.

A native of Scotland, Moran’s images, although based on the landscape she observed around her, were often meant to invoke her homeland, as is the case with the present etching. Notes Sylvester Koehler, the nineteenth-century American proselytizer for the etching medium, “the motive of the etching was supplied by the scenery of Long Island, where Mrs. Moran usually spends her summers with her husband.” However, the details of the scene reflect the words of an old Scottish air, “When the Kye Comes Hame,” describing the return of cows for milking at sunset. The print, already romantic in mood, takes on an even more nostalgic sentiment because such summer evening scenes in Scottish villages have long since disappeared.

Moran learned etching from her husband. She was experimental in technique, combining line etching, dry point, mezzotint, Scotch stone, roulette, and artistic printing to create coloristic effects. She combined several techniques in the print offered here, her best-known print, in order capture the elusive qualities of light that occur “between the gloamin’ and the mirk,” just as twilight descends into darkness. The roulette creates the darkened atmosphere from which emanates a remarkable sense of quietude. A rare and desirable image by this preeminent American etcher.