In 1876 Stephen Ferris made several pencil studies, showing his brother-in-law, artist Thomas Moran. The two men had known each other before Ferris’s marriage to Moran’s sister, Elizabeth Anastasia Moran, in 1862. Ferris had arrived in Philadelphia in 1856 and was recorded in 1861 as sharing a studio with Thomas Moran and Samuel Sartain, whose father, John Sartain, demonstrated the technique of etching for Moran and Ferris.
Thomas Moran’s etched work and that of his wife, Mary Nimmo Moran, is well represented in the NMAH Graphic Arts collection. A number of their prints came as gifts from the Ferris family.
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