Thomas Moran was born in Bolton, Lancashire, England in 1837. He and his family immigrated to the United States when Moran was seven. He worked as an apprentice to a wood engraver and learned about the uses of texture in a work of art. The skills he learned early in his life proved to be highly influential to his artistic pursuits later on.

In 1863 Moran went to Europe and studied the work of J. M. W. Turner, the great British painter of the sublime landscape. In the summer of 1890, Moran visited Venice. Moonlight in Venice, 1898 exhibits a light palette of a blue, green and pink Venetian skyline depicting the shifting surfaces of the buildings, boats, sky, and water. The atmospheric effects of light on water as well as the loosely painted brushstrokes provide a clear indication of Moran’s fascination with Turner’s compositions in the late nineteenth century.