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Lot Essay
Most of these interesting drawings date from Moore's early career, that is to say the late 1850s and the early 1860s. They include studies from nature which betray the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites; indeed, the drawing of ivy dated September 1857 (when Moore was sixteen) can be related to his meticulously finished watercolour of an ash-trunk in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, which dates from the same year and is his main surviving work in this style (see Albert Moore and his Contemporaries, exh. Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1972, no.1, illustrated).
Other drawings were made a few years later and show Moore beginning to evolve the 'aesthetic' classicism for which he is best known. Finally, there are a few drawings which reflect this idiom in its developed form. Some are sketches of ideal female figures, the principal theme of his later work. Others are designs for the woven mats which he often introduced in the foregrounds of these pictures, making their patterns an important element in the colour schemes on which they largely depend for their decorative or 'aesthetic' effect.
The caricature of Swinburne is of considerable biographical interest. Both men belonged to the Pre-Raphaelite circle in the early 1860s. They had many friends in common, notably Whistler and Simeon Solomon, and they must often have met. Swinburne was to write a highly appreciative review of Moore's painting Azaleas (Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin) when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1868, claiming, in a passage which has come to be regarded as a key 'aesthetic' text, that his work was 'to artists what the verse of Théophile Gautier is to poets, the faultless and secure expression of an exclusive worship of things formally beautiful'.
Other drawings were made a few years later and show Moore beginning to evolve the 'aesthetic' classicism for which he is best known. Finally, there are a few drawings which reflect this idiom in its developed form. Some are sketches of ideal female figures, the principal theme of his later work. Others are designs for the woven mats which he often introduced in the foregrounds of these pictures, making their patterns an important element in the colour schemes on which they largely depend for their decorative or 'aesthetic' effect.
The caricature of Swinburne is of considerable biographical interest. Both men belonged to the Pre-Raphaelite circle in the early 1860s. They had many friends in common, notably Whistler and Simeon Solomon, and they must often have met. Swinburne was to write a highly appreciative review of Moore's painting Azaleas (Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin) when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1868, claiming, in a passage which has come to be regarded as a key 'aesthetic' text, that his work was 'to artists what the verse of Théophile Gautier is to poets, the faultless and secure expression of an exclusive worship of things formally beautiful'.