The Gulf of Rosas with Cape Entrada on the left and Cape Begin on the right, the Pyrenees in the distance

Moore's father, the portrait painter William Moore, is said to have told him as a boy: 'Whatever else you paint, you must paint the sea'. In later life Henry adopted this advice, making his reputation as a marine painter to the point where other aspects of his work, no less remarkable in their way, were overlooked. He himself resented this, declaring on one occasion that he wished he had 'never seen a blue sea.'