Sublime and romantic, Thomas Moran's painting Passing Shower, Venice and it's view of the architectural highlights and iconic lagoon of the city, was painted in 1902, nearly two decades after the artist first visited the Italian city. Moran was introduced to Venice initially through the work of Romantic painters and writers, including J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), John Ruskin (1819-1900), and Lord Byron (1788-1824). When he first witnessed the city's splendor firsthand in May 1886, it was a thrilling and profound experience. Moran wrote to his wife Mary, "Venice is all, and more, than travelers have reported of it. It is wonderful. I shall make no attempt at description..." (as quoted in N.K. Anderson et al., Thomas Moran, New Haven, Connecticut, 1997, p. 122)

Moran returned to Venice on a second sketching trip in 1890, and he used the extensive plein air drawing and watercolor studies he produced on both of his visits as the basis for larger and more finished oil paintings he would create for many years in his studio, such as the present painting.

Like his Hudson River School contemporaries, including Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) and Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), Moran travelled extensively through the United States and Europe seeking inspiration. Views of Venice are the most important and frequent subject for the artist, aside from the American West. In fact, after his initial 1886 trip to the city, Moran submitted a Venetian subject nearly every year he exhibited at the National Academy. (Thomas Moran, 1997, p. 123)

Moran's American audience responded enthusiastically to his Venice subjects, drawn to the atmospheric and gauzy views of the scenic 'Floating City' that were so reminiscent of Turner's work. In his Venetian paintings, Moran excels at capturing, at once, the physical and picturesque details of the city while also expressing a sense of his own poetic and dream-like feelings about it.

Dominated by the double domes of Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute to the left and balanced with the Campanile and Doge's Palace at the right, the viewer enters the scene along the Giudecca before a lively vignette of sail boats crowded near a pier. The boats, foreground quay and buildings are painted with clarity in a bold and crisp color palette highlighted with punches of red and yellow, while the distant architecture is draped in gossamer layers of ivory, coral, and violet shadow. Swirling white clouds dominate the sky and are reflected in the still lagoon waters. The present painting's contrasting handling of close and distant light, and the color effects through mist and air, reveal the artist's sophisticated mastery of and ability to deftly articulate atmosphere. In Moran's jewel-toned Venice, the artist presents a sensory view of the architectural splendor of the city while also exploring light, color and imagery influenced by the Romantics.