been chosen by the greatest marine
painter in the United States than the heroic and romantic incidents
connected with the sea, which are so splendidly depicted in these
thirteen grand paintings. That their execution required over fifteen
years of ceaseless labor and the closest historical study is not
surprising. The localities, the ships, the armament, the personages, the
costumes, the weapons and all the incidents connected with each epoch
are minutely and correctly represented, in so far as existing records
rendered that possible. And yet, interwoven with each canvas, is a tone
so poetic and imaginative that stamps it at once as the offspring of
genius and lifts it far above the merely photographic and realistic. The
series is the result of a life of prolific production, careful study,
unceasing industry and great experience.

Mr. Moran himself regarded these pictures as his crowning work, and in
token of his many happy years of married life presented them, several
years before his death, to his wife, Annette Moran, herself an artist of
great merit, and whom he always mentioned as his best critic and the
inspirer of his greatest achievements. This loving act, strange to say,
gave rise to a protracted legal controversy, by reason of an adverse
claim to these paintings made by the executor of the estate of Edward
Moran, the final decision of which in favor of the widow, after three
years of litigation, lends additional interest to these remarkable works
of art. Proceedings to recover the pictures from the executor of the
estate, who had them in his possession and refused to deliver them to
her, were commenced on February 5, 1902, and after a trial in the
Supreme Court in the City of New York lasting several days, a jury
decided that the pictures were the property of the widow as claimed. On
a technical point of law raised by the executor this finding of the jury
was temporarily rendered ineffective, but, on an appeal to the Appellate
Division of the Supreme Court, this technicality was overruled and an
absolute judgment awarded in favor of the widow.[A] This was on January
23, 1903. Still not content, the executor appealed to the highest court
in the State, the Court of Appeals at Albany, which, on January 26,
1904, finally and absolutely affirmed the decision of the Appellate
Division.[B] But even then the widow was kept out of her property on
further applications made by the executor to the court. Also in this he
fai