Moran''s family emigrated from England in 1844 and settled in Pennsylvania. He began his artistic career as a teenage apprentice to the Philadelphia wood-engraving firm Scattergood & Telfer. After two years of training, he produced illustrations and works in watercolour and began developing lithographs of landscapes around the Great Lakes in the 1860s. Moran was introduced to the work of J. M. W. Turner while studying in England in 1862, and acknowledged Turner''s influence on his use of color and choice of landscapes. During the 1870s and 1880s Moran''s designs for wood-engraved illustrations appeared in major magazines and gift oriented publications.