Victorian Art in Britain

The perverse tendency of popular opinion to misunderstand originality and to fail in bestowing upon it a due amount of appreciation, has never been more strongly exemplified than in the case of Albert Moore. Here was a painter unique in his powers and in his methods; of superlative skill in all technical details; so warmly admired by those who knew him;, and believed in him, that not one of his pictures was ever allowed to remain even for a brief time unsold; yet he dies at the sufficiently mature age of fifty two, not only without official recognition, but without having gained that general comprehension and acknowledgement of his artistic aims, which is to the earnest worker his chief crown of success. And this has arisen not from any failure on his part to set forth his beliefs intelligibly, nor from any lack of specific purpose in his productions, but unquestionably from the popular unwillingness to separate the matter of his art from the manner in which he expressed it.

People misconceived his intentions, and in this misconception have accused him of many deficiencies, failing to see that these very deficiencies were the essential characteristics of his work. He painted without subject, without emotion, without dramatic incident or incidental motive, and he did so advisedly, for he looked upon all such matters as the pollution of pure Art. He avoided all digressions into sensationalism and confined himself to a particular kind of technical treatment; again advisedly, for these limitations were the safeguards which years of thoughtful experience had taught him were necessary against the aesthetic profligacy which is undermining the vitality of our modern art.

People said he was narrow, and repeated himself, using over again and again ideas which were too slight to bear reiteration: but they were blind to the fact that this repetition was a progressive development of a particular branch of study. They never realised that, like some great physician who had devoted himself in the interests of that economy to the minute investigation of some fundamental organ, he had dedicated is life to the solution of the problems which are ever arising to occupy the student of beauty. This was his special study. Beauty of colour, of form, of line, of type, was the chief motive of every picture that he ever produced, and of every one of the thousands of studies with which his working hours were occupied.

People talked nonsense about him as 'a painter of Greek maidens.' He was nothing of the kind. He painted draperies because they are more beautiful than modern dress; he painted women because in their faces and figures beauty shows more than in any other created thing; he painted faces without emotion because emotion distorts the features and destroys beauty of form. His art was Greek in nothing but it's simplicity and single-mindedness. He did all this without a thought of anything but his art, and he received the usual reward of self-devotion, misunderstanding.

He happily escaped the struggle for life which has been the fate of many other great artists; but none the less he lived a victim of injustice. It needed, perhaps, his death to make these things clear. The blame for this mistaken popular attitude lies in great measure upon the Royal Academy. This body, which assumes the position of supreme arbiter of artistic destinies in this country, has with the masses influence enough to secure for it's proteges that consideration which is the first step towards real appreciation; and that influence it over and over again refused to exercise in the case of Albert Moore. There was no question of ignorance of his existence-his works were year by year welcomed at Burlington House and given places of honour on it's walls; but the artist was never allowed to inscribe his name on the Academy roll. Personal jealousies, his inability to accommodate himself to the views of the official custodians of British art, his open criticism of his contemporaries, or some other trivial cause, sufficed each election to exclude him. He lived and died outside the ranks of privilege.

My Comments.

Unfortunately this exceptionally perceptive piece was unsigned, therefor I am unable to attribute it to any particular writer and critic. That Moore, one of the very greatest English painters of the second half of the 19th century, was excluded from even Associate status at the Royal Academy was indeed a scandal. It is known that Sir Frederic Leighton was strongly in favour of his election, but that as PRA it was his duty to remain aloof from such matters. This he did, carrying out his duties with his usual fastidious regard for fairness and integrity. Moore lived for his art, and could be direct in the expression of his opinions. There has been some speculation about irregularities in his relationship with one of his models, but no record of this has survived, and the behaviour of Academicians was not above reproach.

More Albert Moore

Albert Joseph Moore was one of the most highly individual artists of the nineteenth century. His pictures were beautiful arrangements of line and colour, which were often misunderstood during his lifetime. Strangely enough he still seems to attract ill-considered criticism, and artistic ill-treatment today, more than one hundred and ten years after his untimely death. He was recently subjected to adverse comment on the usually sensible and sympathetic ARC web site, and his pictures continue to suffer trial by incompetence due to their scandalously bad hanging at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, whose curatorial staff should be ashamed of themselves. The book review I produce below is from The Magazine of Art, 1895. It was titled “Albert Moore: His Life and Works,” by Alfred Lys Baldry, whose obituary may be found on VAB.

Recent Illustrated Volumes

The late Albert Moore was in no sense an ordinary personality. As an artist - though he was never able to add to his name any other letters than RWS - he was a painter of very distinctive ideas as to his art and most independent in his way of carrying them out; as a man he was no less fearless and independent in his ideas of men and things. His biographer (Alfred Lys Baldry) like some of his friends is rather severe on members of the Royal Academy because the never made him a member of their august body. But there is something to be said on the other side. There is a good deal of human nature even in an artist; and whilst there were some members of the Royal Academy who could forget the man in the artist, it is scarcely to be expected that any large numbers should be found willing to elect as one of themselves a man who constantly spoke of them with disrespect and even with contempt.. They may certainly be excused for feeling that they were not good enough company for one who could, for example, say openly that there was “not one of their number who was capable of designing a brass button.”

And Mr Moore’s biographer makes rather too much of the fact that to the last he remained an outsider. For the sake of that large body of men who by no chance whatever can become Academicians, it is a good thing that some men of recognised ability remain amongst them. Inasmuch as David Cox, John Linnell, Holman Hunt, Sire Edward Burne-Jones, and Albert Moore have remained outside the Academy, no outsider need feel that any reproach attaches to him; he is in company of as good men as any who comprise the academic body. It is the Academy that suffers in repute if a really great artist is left unrecognised by election to its body. Mr Baldry rightly refutes any suggestion that “the mere decorative painter” is something inferior to one who is not decorative, who paints nature from the simple standpoint of realism, and who seeks to illustrate rather than beautify; and he is no less right in his statement that the finest art in all ages has been decorative. But in these later days it is possible to treat this fact with scorn, and, indeed, to make it a reason for a refusal to continue to be decorative. We have fallen upon an age when it is common to treat all tradition with scant respect - when, indeed, there is little faith in the past - when every man is a law unto himself. Albert Moore is an exception. Years ago Mr Sidney Colvin wrote of him as a man holding “a special theoretical conviction - a set doctrine as to what are and what are not the proper aims of the painter:” as one “who has never swerved from his habit, right or wrong, of making the decorative aspect of his canvas, regarded as an arrangement of beautiful lines and refreshing colours, the one important matter in his work. The subject, whatever subject is chosen, is merely a mechanism for getting beautiful people into beautiful situations, whereas in modern art the aspect of and their situations whether beautiful or otherwise, has been generally merely an instrument for expounding the subject.” There is no doubt whatever that the modern passion for realism in the first place, and technique in the second, has blinded our perception of the beautiful to such an extent that there are few men who can recognise a beautiful thing when they see it. The sense of beauty has been practically destroyed by the steady refusal to cultivate it.

The story of the life and work of Mr Albert Moore is the story of one who devoted himself to the pursuit of beauty before everything. If his biographer is at times too enthusiastic it may easily be forgiven him, for Mr Moore was his master; but he has reasons for his enthusiasm, and though he takes up now and then a questionable position - as when he seeks to put his master, as a colourist, on a higher pinnacle than the Venetians - all that he has written is of interest to the artist. Perhaps the most valuable portion of the book to the art student is the chapter giving an exposition of Albert Moore’s working principles, in which it is explained most clearly and in detail, the artist’s method of work. The book is very fully and admirably illustrated, and beautifully printed at the Chiswick Press.